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Offline CrusherTopic starter

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #14 on: December 26, 2004, 06:31:25 PM »
Hmm.. (please don´t misunderstand me)
The only thing your attitude is doing ("move on..." and "Forget the old ones...") is just resulting in the opposite. People who tell me that is not possible and so on, just convinces me more that it can be done. Yes, you are right I don´t know much of this but I know that if it has been built, if I can imagine it then it can be built(again). I´m just going to look further, so thank you for giving me inspiration too bad you couldn´t help me.  :-)
Mainframe: Amiga 3000 Tower, CSPPC233/060, 144+2MB, 36GB UW, Prometheus, Voodoo5 5500, 10Mbit, 24xCDr, OS 4.0 ....Amiga since 1987.
 

Offline Wain

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #15 on: December 26, 2004, 07:37:54 PM »
Quote

Crusher wrote:
Hmm.. (please don´t misunderstand me)
The only thing your attitude is doing ("move on..." and "Forget the old ones...") is just resulting in the opposite. People who tell me that is not possible and so on, just convinces me more that it can be done. Yes, you are right I don´t know much of this but I know that if it has been built, if I can imagine it then it can be built(again). I´m just going to look further, so thank you for giving me inspiration too bad you couldn´t help me.  :-)


Nice way to ask people a question and then condemn them when they give you an answer you don't like.



This topic has been gone over thousands of times over the past 10 years...it is not economically feasible to build replacement chips.
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Offline Fats

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #16 on: December 27, 2004, 11:46:48 AM »
Quote

Crusher wrote:
Hmm.. (please don´t misunderstand me)
The only thing your attitude is doing ("move on..." and "Forget the old ones...") is just resulting in the opposite. People who tell me that is not possible and so on, just convinces me more that it can be done. Yes, you are right I don´t know much of this but I know that if it has been built, if I can imagine it then it can be built(again). I´m just going to look further, so thank you for giving me inspiration too bad you couldn´t help me.  :-)


Here are the facts, please let me know when you have found a solution :)
- The availability of the shematics is very uncertain. If these can't be located it will be very difficult to make pin/signal compatible replacement chips. Even if they can be found it will be very difficult to remake them with todays technology.
- Startup costs are at least a few 10000USD, engineering costs not included. You can do the math about how many chips you want to sell and how much you have to ask to break even and then decide the chance you will sell any set at all. These startup costs is only in the assumption all the chips are not too big so they can be produced in the same run. If not, then you have to multiply the startup costs with the number of runs needed.

For me I think the only viable solution is either:
- Recycle the working parts of broken A1200/A2000/A3000/A4000 motherboards
- A full replacement of the motherboard. Something like the C-1. A full motherboard replacement with the connectors the same but internally with programmed FPGA(s) that try to mimic the Amiga internals. Also this will only be viable when the source of old 'new' A1200 motherboards has dried up because I think it will still cost a multiple of the 50EUR they ask for a A1200 motherboard.

Conclusion: for now it is best to just buy a replacement A1200 motherboard if your computer breaks down.

greets,
Staf.
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Offline CrusherTopic starter

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #17 on: December 27, 2004, 03:04:27 PM »
Wain, you misunderstood me anyway, I don´t condemn them. It´s just that if someone tells me that it isn´t possible then I´m convinced that it is possible. :-)
Yes I know that this question has been up many times and everyone says that it can´t be done and still new things are made, everyday is a new day to invent stuff. By the way, I´m brainstorming still.

Fats, how about reversed engineering? Those FPGA´s sounds interresting but then I guess I have to make an adapter so they can be connected directly to the custom-chip-sockets?

The other thing almost everyone is talking about is the cost, I´m not interrested in the cost right now. I know it will cost alot, I´m only interrested in how to make these chips.  :-)
Mainframe: Amiga 3000 Tower, CSPPC233/060, 144+2MB, 36GB UW, Prometheus, Voodoo5 5500, 10Mbit, 24xCDr, OS 4.0 ....Amiga since 1987.
 

Offline nilix

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #18 on: December 27, 2004, 06:06:37 PM »
http://www.retrohacker.org/c64dtvhack

ok I know the C64 isn't close to the amiga but it's even older and they have put it on a 2 inch Breadboard people have hacked those little buggers to have keyboards and floppy drives.

now wishful thinking.... Zorro slots would be lost....

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Offline nex4060

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #19 on: December 27, 2004, 06:49:04 PM »
It is posible to make the Amigas custom chips useing FPGAs, however you might need some buffers in order to make them electric compatible with the rest of the computer (many FPGAs run on 5v and will interact nicely with an older processor). But if the scematics is lost it would be very difficult to make them and then again even with the sceamatics it is still alot of hard work to program the FPGAs from old sceamtics.

I have been working quite a bit with FPGAs for a school project I have progammed them to emulate some processors (even an early MC RISC with pipeline, cache and all). FPGAs are very nice devices and cheap also however they can't do magic for you esspecailly if you don't have the scematics.

btw: sorry for my poor spelling.
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Offline DonnyEMU

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #20 on: December 27, 2004, 09:04:25 PM »
I want to see the Amiga chipset remade but I also want to see a Commodore 65 too :-)
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Offline Fats

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #21 on: December 27, 2004, 09:37:01 PM »
Quote
The other thing almost everyone is talking about is the cost, I´m not interrested in the cost right now. I know it will cost alot, I´m only interrested in how to make these chips.


If you have all the money you have I think your quest will look something like the following step:
1 Locate and license the schematics.
2 Find a foundry (microelectronics production plant) like TSMC and select a process to fabricate the chips on.
3 Reengineer the schematics so the chips can be produced with your selected technology
4 Do a production run of your chips.
5 Redo step 3 and 4 until you have a fully compatible chip.

If you want to involve reverse engineering and FPGAs you can start from the UAE sources I think. You then have to convert this into a hardware description language (VHDL or Verilog) and test it on the FPGA. You can also try to make interfaces to place the FPGAs in the place of the original chips. More information about FPGAs can also be found on FPGA4Fun.
Then a lot of engineering needs to be done to get the FPGA chip compatible with the real chip, probably comparing signal output with an oscilloscope from your programmed device and a real amiga chip.
Now I think of it there are also companies like ChipX that allow to convert FPGA design into chips much cheaper then the full custom layout. Google for 'structured ASICs' if you want more information.

Hope this is already enough information to start your quest :)

greets,
Staf.

PS: People wondering how I know all this should read about my employer and you will understand it better.
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Offline desborough

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #22 on: December 27, 2004, 09:38:47 PM »
As someone who used to be a tape out engineer for a semi conductor company, perhaps I can shed some light on the costs that you are dismissing so lightly. When I used to send prototype data to the likes of IBM and TSMC it used to cost millions just to get a small batch of a couple of hundred chips. It is only when you move into large scale production that costs become realistic, do you think that the Amiga market can warrant such large scale production?
Even if the schematics were available I doubt that the libraries that tools like Cadence require to load the data are still avaiable.

 

Offline billt

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #23 on: December 28, 2004, 06:19:00 AM »
"Can it be done"?

Yes.

"Will it be done"?

No.

There are two options, implement the things in an FPGA, or have custom ASIC silicon made.

Custom ASIC silicon is far far too expensive for this to make sense. It could be done, reverse engineer the design, get new masks for a current process, but it won't happen. Why? It'll cost a few million US$, and it'll take a few years to do. No one in their right mind would spend millions of US$ on chips that in order to remain "custom chips" would opnly be allowed to be used in a couple thousand computers, adn taking a number of years for that many of these computers to be sold. There's no way it'd ever get paid for.

Using an FPGA instead of custom silicon begins to be practical. Even if you were to make a custom ASIC of these chips, you should do it in FPGA first for debug of your design, before wasting millions of US$ on debug of custom silicon. The FPGA chip is already built, all you have to do is figure out how big your circuit design is, how fast it must run, and pick an appropriate FPGA chip to hold it. FPGAs don't "emulate", they "are". There's gobs of generic circuitry in there, and your design selects which particular bits of curcuitry is actually used, and which interconnect pathways get used, and in the end you get a true implementation of your design, not an "emulation" of it. It's slower than custom siliicon due to the genericness, and there's effectively wasted space compared to custom silicon, but in our size market makes such things economically not absolutely throw you in a rubber room insane. There's a lot less things that need paid for this way, you don't need to buy masks to build custom silicon, you don't need to buy silicon design verification CAD/EDA programs, etc. but you will still need to buy verilog or VHDL simulators, timing verification CAD/EDA program, and pay engineers to do the work.

The FPGA way was attempted once. Remember the BoXeR? That's what that was. And we all know how well that worked out... If you wanted to use FPGA replacements in classic Amigas, you'll need to make adaptor boards sortof like the DKB Megachip board that fit into the motherboard socket, ,and have your FPGA on this board. I had begun the earliest thoughts of replacing Buster this way in my A4000T, hoping to get a speed improvement. Didn't get very far before finding other things to occupy my time. And if you don't have a socket on your motherboard, you'll have to put on there, surface mounted PLCC sockets can be found that will solder into place where your PLCC chips are soldered...

But again, this would be too expensive to make any business sense. It would take quite a while as well, as you still have to reverse-engineer the chips, considering the designs are lost. And even with the service manuals, hardware RKM, other various hardware books, and programming books describing the API for assembly metal-bangers, it will be very hard work and take a very long time to do properly.

Yes, it is technologically "possible" to do. But it's so far outside of anything even remotely resembling "practical", it will never happen. Anyone trying will most likely go bankrupt before finishing, just like anyone involved with the BoXeR project proved.
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Offline bloodline

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #24 on: December 28, 2004, 02:22:43 PM »
Quote

nilix wrote:
http://www.retrohacker.org/c64dtvhack

ok I know the C64 isn't close to the amiga but it's even older and they have put it on a 2 inch Breadboard people have hacked those little buggers to have keyboards and floppy drives.

now wishful thinking.... Zorro slots would be lost....



Don't forget the Amiga has as much processing power in it's keyboard controler as the Commodore 64 has in total.

-Note- The mouse connected to my PC has more processing power than an Amiga 4000/030 :-o I see a pattern! :lol:

Offline CrusherTopic starter

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #25 on: December 28, 2004, 08:12:42 PM »
Wow, I knew there would be people that knew this. I´ll read everything. Thank´s guys. If you got more, just post´em.  :-)
Mainframe: Amiga 3000 Tower, CSPPC233/060, 144+2MB, 36GB UW, Prometheus, Voodoo5 5500, 10Mbit, 24xCDr, OS 4.0 ....Amiga since 1987.
 

Offline K7HTH

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #26 on: December 28, 2004, 09:46:07 PM »
I am sure there are existing EEPROMs that are phyically compatible with the custom chips. With these the custom chips could be burned to the EEPROMS and we would then have plenty of spares at minimal cost. How about that?
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Offline Zac67

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #27 on: December 28, 2004, 10:14:32 PM »
You can only do very simple designs in EEPROMs (like C64's PLA or Gary), no complex state machines like Buster, Agnus etc. are possible...

The C64 was so much simpler in design, there's no way to compare a redesign - definitely possible and has been done - to that of an Amiga. Of course it's possible but obviously it will not be done in the near future.

I habe a deep admiration for the guys having made UAE which must have been a tremendous amount of work. But what you are talking about is _hardware_ that not only has to function the same way as the original but even has to be compatible on pin level.

Come to think of it: when ferromagnetic logic circuits come out in 10? years, we can redesign a 'real' Amiga with ridiculous speed just with software tools - but then, who will want/need a 30 year old design?
 

Offline Doobrey

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #28 on: December 28, 2004, 11:56:12 PM »
Quote

KD7HTH wrote:
I am sure there are existing EEPROMs that are phyically compatible with the custom chips.


Are you getting EEPROM mixed up with FPGA?
EEPROM is just an erasable version of a Kickstart ROM chip, there`s no logic inside which could be programmed to act like the custom chips.
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Offline Van_M

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Re: Remake Amiga chips?
« Reply #29 from previous page: December 29, 2004, 12:27:22 AM »
To my understanding, the most feasible solution for running the old hardware-banging SW, would be to emulate it on software mode. If the A/box of Morphos was advanced to the state of emulating AGA & ECS, Paula, timers, I/O, and recognising optimal CPU mode for a given application (that is almost impossible), I'm sure noone would miss the old chipset.
now imagine this version of MOS, running on a Pegasos III with the following specs:
Dual-core next gen G4 1.5 GHz with the northbridge integrated in it (DDR2 mem controller, dual PCI-Express bus), a neat southbridge having USB 2.0, firewire, SATA, decent 5.1 sound and 3 "ancient" PCI slots!
MOS would be tailored to take advantage of the 2 CPU cores and developer libraries would provide for target CPU of the 2. That would be one killer of a machine, wouldn't it!
I have the suspicion that I've gone slightly out of subject but anyway...
Custom chips is a thing of the past.  
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