Check This Out! (Hoax Amiga vapourware)

[T_Bone]

Cool, we have kamikazi trolls here too

(never believe a news item by a user with 1 post) :-D

[levelLORD]

Dushane Jocicu, da ne kakish ti malo? U chemu je tvoj problem? Custom-made MAtrox Card sve zajedno sa DirectX9.1 na AMigi???  PPC procesor 1,2,4, shta bilo, G4 na 970 ili 980 i to 2004 ili 2005??? Ko zna shta ce biti 2004 ili '05... Kome ti ovo prodajesh? Ne razumem samo ulozhen napor da se registrujesh na sajt kako bi potpalio vatru...

Ajd, pa u zdravlje....

levelLORD

[Coder]

@T_Bone

(never believe a news item by a user with 1 post)

I agree. Really when there is no info in the profile of them. :-)

Coder

[levelLORD]

Guy is a troll, all that he's talking about doesn't make any sense to me... Whatever.
I don't believe him a word, u ppl how ever u like....

Later,

levelLORD

[csirac_]

@olegil

Some day Shawn is going to realize that Z3 uses a multiplexed addressing (it's a 24 + 16 bit bus used to transfer 32 + 32 bit address/data information), and that this means PCI (with 32 bit multiplexed between address and data) is actually not less efficient.

Hopefully he'll fit his whole head in front of the shotgun.

HAHA, So I guess I'm not the only one who tried to convince him of these facts. He was totally convinced "bus arch" is so poor, Amiga is farking fantastic, he wouldn't even explain what he meant by "bus arch" after I went to _great_ lengths explaining what a bus is, all CPUs have them, it's just a bunch of wires for chrissake... must have been about 6 or 7 emails before I gave up. He's got mates working on Z5, you know, and he's got some qualification from some Computing faculty somewhere, and my MEE degree is obviously worthless if I can't see how bad "Bus Arch" is...

Silly as a wheel.

- Paul

[vortexau]

What's in a name?

 ° DID you get it?
Sometimes it is all revealed by a simple 'mouseover?'

Ahh! THAT name! Its better when Cheech says it.

[Kees]

@ olegil

You need to upload a new avatar dude ...  :-)

[Doobrey]

Looks like someone has just written a list of all the latest technology buzzwords with bugger all thought on how it would all fit together..
 How would all those different memory specs fit together?
 Would Rambus XDR Ram be of any use to a G5?
 And " HDD support from 80 GB to ..."  Does that mean that drives under 80GB won`t work ??
 And whats with the obsession with custom chipsets...they ain`t needed anymore. All they do if make the end product a lot more expensive( and waste a lot more development time) than using someone elses gfx or sound etc etc.

Ah well, at least that post gave me a good laugh..

[downix]

@olegil

I can actually come up with a scenario for a custom or semi-custom hardware design, one which is starting to occur:

Most computers run Windows.  Most of the rest run Mac OS X.  That means that Microsoft and Apple can apply a *LOT* of pressure on chip vendors to only support their solutions and no other.  As a result, vendors for alternative solutions have to turn to customized, or semi-customized chips just to remain competitive.

It's either that or remain forever 3-4 generations behind the market-leader, if you're lucky.  (Ever tried to get nVidia support for a non-x86 Linux?)

It's a "Customize or die" time then.

[downix]

@Doobrey

You can buy off-the-shelf chipsets, yes.  But getting support for those, that is the trick.  Having the latest and greatest GeForce FX is not going to do you any good when there are no drivers to be found, nor even any ability of getting drivers for the next 2-3 years, unless you run Windows.  

[CodeSmith]

Thankfully, custom chips are no longer as much of an expense as they used to be.  Thanks to FPGAs getting faster and cheaper, someone working on alternative hardware no longer needs to spend mega-$$$ to mass-produce his new boards.  Look at the c-one - it's essentially a home-grown computer that's about as complex as an OCS/ECS Amiga, the production runs are tiny (300 boards), but Jens can sell them for less than $300 each.  A decade ago, everything else being the same, that $300 would've been about $10K if not more.

[downix]

@CodeSmith

Which is part of my point.  Now note, you can't make something to compete with even a first-generation Radeon in an FPGA, however there are other, faster, chip processes availible, and new fabbing systems have been created which reduce the cost of manufacture.  Even in low-batches, a Radeon 9800 competing chip (going by gate-count here only) would run only $400 to produce.  That's not too terribly much more than a Radeon 9800 card itself, and we're talking in batches of tens, not thousands.  And that's going soly by gate-count.  The possibilities are endless today, as custom and semi-custom chips can be produced for far lower cost than what was possible even 5 years ago.

[olegil]

@Kees:
Nah, my face isn't ready for public consumption.

[CodeSmith]

@downix:

Exactly - FPGA is just one of the tools smaller developers have these days.  If you are small fry and you want hardware to fit a particular spec, and the companies that make such hardware will give you neither drivers nor the information you need to write them (as is the case with nvidia), 10 years ago you would've been hosed.  The biggest reason Commodore had their own chip manufacturing arm was to make sure the people making their chips had Commodore's best interests in mind.

[Dr_Righteous]

@Kees:
Nah, my face isn't ready for public consumption.

Ahh, but the real question is, are you sure you want the public to consume your face?!  :-P

[Hammer]

dusanjocic wrote:
I came out the spec. from the company named "Orion" who will make an AmigaOne with this. It will be out at the market in 2004 or 2005.

 - PPC Processor (Single, Dual or Quad; G4, 970 or 980)
- Rambus Redwood I/O technology support
- Rambus XDR DRAM memory support (up to 16 GB)
- Rambus RaSer IP Cell for PCI Express
- Single, Dual or Quad indenpendente FSB (from 400 MHz to 6,4 GHz)
- Kickstart In 4 MB or 16 MB MRAM
- Custom Made Matrox graphic card (Pixel and Vertex Shaders 3.0 and Direct X 9.1)
- Second Generation Of Custom Chips
- RLDRAM II memory support for Custom Chips ( up to 576 MB)
- USB 2.0 (6 ports) support
- FireWire 800 (4 ports) support
- Wireless Technology - WiFi 802.11n (320 MB/s) support
- SerialATA II (3 GB/s) support
- High Definition DVD-ROM (HD-DVD) support
- Blue Ray Disc support
- 56 K V.92 Modem support
- PCI Express slots support (up to 4)
- Zorro 5 slots support (up to 3)
- RAID support for Dual And Quad models (2+4 independent connectors)
- x86-64 processor (AmigaOne expansion card add-on)
- Coldfire processor (AmigaOne expansion card add-on)
- HDD support from 80 GB to ... (with 10.000 rpm and 8 MB cache)
- Creative Labs 3 support
- Wireless USB support

subject line edited by mikeymike

It’s better to have a commoditized X86 based motherboard (e.g. AMD K8 motherboard) with PowerPC G3/G4-on-a-PCI/PCI-X card solution for cost reasons...