New x86 "accelerator" for Classic Amiga?

[Zac67]

AFAIK the framework needed for a modern x86 CPU is a major pain in the *ss. You'll need lots of stuff like a north bridge (RAM controller, interfaces) and high performance power regulation. To make the north bridge work, you'll have to license a complete PC BIOS, which in turn requires more peripherals, so you end up with 3/4 of a PC mainboard.

The easiest way would be to take a small (µATX, mini ITX) mainboard and build a PCI <-> Zorro III or CPU-fast-slot bridge and just connect the mobo to the Amiga, just like in Ratte's link - would even give you an upgrade path, so you might consider using PCIe instead in the first place.

Again, this is pretty much an Amiga on a PCI card. If you also use the x86 side's graphics hardware through RTG and the sound through AHI, there's actually not much left of the original hardware, so you could also use UAE with Keyrah and Catweazle.

[skope]

dammy wrote:

What's the deal with amiga-people and custom hw anyway? What about just porting the os for x86 based machines? Apple did it...  

That has already been done.

Dammy

"If you came here because you thought AROS was a finished, complete and fully usable operating system, you will most likely be disappointed." <- In my book, that's a no.

[LoadWB]

AMD processors have all that stuff (North Bridge) on-chip.

While reading this I was thinking MiniMig-type of accelerator, but the device uses a real 68000 CPU.  I think there was another post which mentioned 68k emulation in an FPGA, then clocking the hell out of it.

How would an FPGA emulated 68040 run on an accelerator?  Could an FPGA emulate an '040 with an equivalent speed of 80MHz or more?  Could it work in a standard Amiga accelerator, or would it require more electronics?

With the way we're moving along with technology, I would expect that we could build a 68000-compatible accelerator without a real 68k on-board.

But then, the question is who's going to front the money.  Engineering Master's project, anyone?  Seem like some of the best stuff came out of uni... :-)

[LoadWB]

Ratte wrote:
< The idea .. Sorry its in german >
< First letters on Amiga.org >
< Schematics >
< read the second comment >
< actual overview .. now with 1Ghz Athlon instead P3 700 >
< reserved for the pci-bridge >

 :hammer:

Can we get any of this translated?  My German is rusty, dating back to 80's info files for BBS downloads...

[Tripitaka]

How about Coldfire?
 :flame:

he,he....sorry folks, I just couldn't resist.

[dammy]

"If you came here because you thought AROS was a finished, complete and fully usable operating system, you will most likely be disappointed." <- In my book, that's a no.

Or outdated documentation on AROS.org.  There is only one major "gotcha" left with AROS and that can be neutralized during a fresh install by creating a very small AFFS for booting and make work partition as SFS.  I have AROS running natively on a laptop and a desktop without issues.

Dammy

[jrkenn]

I actually had an idea of usin DosUAE with dos 6.22 and booting strait into WB from the batch file. True, its not real Amiga hardware but basically its the OS we want to use. Remember when you had to have Dos to use Windows? This would basically be the same idea just OS 3.1 and Dos underneath the whole thing like W98 and such.

Its fun to play around with this stuff and it always sparks new ideas that could lead to something different. Anything besides Vista is fine by me!! LOL

[Haranguer]

This is an interesting idea.  I've been thinking along similar lines myself.

However, I'd like to have some FPGA between the x86 and the Amiga to translate and to handle SMP, so the Amiga thinks it sees a ridiculously fast single-core 68k chip rather than a multi-core x86.

This would involve some looking ahead and translating in parallel as the FPGA would be somewhat slower than the CPU.

[Iggy]

This idea gets brought up on a regular basis.

Personally, I think it would be easier to create an FPGA based board that would plug into an X86 PC and emulate an advanced Amiga.

[Haranguer]

@Iggy

Yes.  That's even better.

[persia]

@DrValkyer

Yeah mon, I totally see it.....

[Heiroglyph]

This idea gets brought up on a regular basis.

Personally, I think it would be easier to create an FPGA based board that would plug into an X86 PC and emulate an advanced Amiga.

I'd be amazed if an FPGA that has to communicate through a "slow" PCI-e bus could run faster than pure software.

On a low end PC you'd still have 3 to 7 multi-GHz x86 cores plus the GPU to act like a custom chipset.

[Digiman]

2 things would help the problem....

1. A way to directly access the floppy drive from within UAE in read and write form (because OS4/MOS/AROS/Amithlon all use UAE for chipset emulation)

2. Some affordably priced replica Amiga cases to house modern X86 motherboards for the above.

Nobody has done this.