HenryCase wrote:
bloodline wrote:
No, I separate out the NATAMI because unlike the MiniMIG and the CloneA, the motivation behind it don't make any sense, or at least seem very unrealistic!
The motivation is unrealistic/suspect? The ideas behind the commercialisation of the Natami only started recently (probably around the time bbrv offered to help with getting it running Coldfire, which we know now was not the path to take), and you've said yourself that you see it as an interesting hobby project, yet the motivation behind the Natami is suspect?
Are you questioning Thomas Hirsch's motives or the motives of the other people interested in the Natami?
The motives of the others around the project. I've not had any contact with the devs, but there are suggestions on the main project site that are cause for concern!
The Natami doesn't need to be flying off the shelves in shops to be a success, maybe you think it does? Cue Garth:
"It's like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that's just really sad."
The MiniMIG is just trying to be Amiga compatible... that is the motivation... that is what everyone working on it is trying to achieve. It doesn't matter what the MiniMIG devs have to do, they can do anything to improve the compatibility.
The Minimig is open source, any one can build what they like with it. If I had the time (and skill) to implement the AAA chipset on the Minimig your argument falls apart, as the AAA is Amiga technology and something that (the majority of) Minimig fans would not shun.
AAA never worked. No one will ever know what AAA would have been like or even how it would have worked if C= had ever got it to work.
NATAMI seems to have some crazy idea about making a better Amiga, for no discernible reason...
Why is that such a bad idea? If a company were releasing the Natami I would probably class them as 'brave', it doesn't have enough mass appeal for today's market, but to those who are interested in it it is a huge deal, and providing Amiga developers embrace it too it could be a very interesting retro platform for a good number of computer fans from different computing 'cults'.
It's fine, but it's not a commercial idea. It's a hobby idea, it's not $20 ASICs and $100 dev boards... it is these claims that irritate me.
So Dennis got the MiniMIG from idea to shipping product in 2 years... and I understand that he took a break between finishing the design and releasing it... and the NATAMI has been in process for 5 years and is not even out of the development phase... does that not start alarm bells ringing?
You're clutching at straws here, why would that bother me? It's clear that the Natami consists of a more complex design than the Minimig, more complexity = longer development time.
The more complex the design the more worried I get... I never make a project more complex than it has to be to achieve the required task! If the NATAMI is a great AGA clone and runs AGA software really well, but is going to take 20 years to develop... just because of extra feature that 98.4% of the time simply won't be used, then the project has little value!
Every extra feature takes time and silicon away from debugging the standard AGA features... Plus somethings I have read about the "Super" features would be incompatible by design... anyway that isn't the point, why bother with these new features, no existing software can use them!
According to the Natami team the development process for SuperAGA is close to complete, including AGA compatibility.
What does that mean? Feature compete? Alpha stage, beta phase... RC?!?! People are getting excited based on little information...
I'm so glad that this chipset was developed (largely) in secret so we didn't have to go through the painful 'will they let us down' phase. Of course the Natami60 hasn't been released yet, but I'm confident we'll see some progress on that soon.
Yes, that word that has plagued the Amiga for the past 15 years... Soon...
Yes the SuperAGA features are mostly useful for new software development, but there may be one or two features I've heard of that will be of use to standard Amiga software.
And the crux of my concern... why waste all that dev time and silicon for one or two features...
I don't care how well it works, I just don't understand the project motivations or perhaps really I don't understand what benefits this has over MiniMIG and CloneA as a commercial product... but I can see disadvantages...
You're argument is baffling.
Then I'm not explaining myself clearly... where does my argument fall down?
Any product sold, whether that be to Amiga hobbyists or any other group, is a commercial product.
The Minimig (in its preassembled form) is a commercial product, it is selling to those who are interested in it, the Natami will do the same. If someone is willing to pay money for something then it has the potential to be a commercial product. Some of us (myself included) may get a little carried away with dreaming what the Natami could do, but that doesn't give you an excuse to knock the technology, which is the issue at hand here.
As a hobby project, the price doesn't really matter, the time scales don't matter, protecting the IP doesn't matter (so release the source code), Success doesn't matter... Open the project up let everyone have a play and learn... is any of this true with NATAMI?
If the SuperAGA was shown to be highly compatible with AGA, became open sourced, and was developed for a future Minimig revision, would you still shun it then?
No of course not. I would love a cheap Replacement board for my A1200, based around an FPGA... But nothing I've read or heard about the NATAMI project suggests that it will offer me this.
