alexh wrote:
Plus isnt Natami just "vapourware"?
We've seen no real evidence that they are doing anything, other than talk bollocks most of the time.
Non of the "technical" discussions they have ever go beyond the "high level idea" stage. There are no posts of technical investigations, nor implementation level ideas.
Thomas demo'd the orignal C-one developed Natami FPGA work with a 68030 quite a while ago now so the basics of the AGA and some of his extended modes have already been shown. The new revisions are the "vapour" part of it in that it's not done yet.
The rest of your critique feels a bit harsh though. Most of what gets discussed in the public part of the forum is really high-level because no-one wants to get bogged down discussing every little detail in there. That was part of the reason for Thomas not wanting to involve others in the project originally.
Plus everyone's a volunteer so the updates that get done are just done in 5 minutes by whoever has a spare moment. Some weeks no development gets done at all because everyone's got a life, family and jobs.
Lately there's been a flurry of activity with people writing test cases for the cpu simulation so that it can eventually get to compatibility with something like a 68EC040. But thats not planned for another year or so probably. The current 060 based natami is still being built by Thomas with the 060 on a daughter board
"060 card" and that's what'll be released first for people to get to use, just a few boards to begin with.
The much over discussed 3DCore will either be at a basic level by then (
maybe just missing a lot of features and modes) or it'll just be released later. The softCPU planned, calling it 680x0 whatever may come even later than that, although its the part seeing the most development right now.
I'm not saying that everything is perfect and going to be out immediately or that there isn't a lot of rubbish talked about it but it is happening. It's just pretty damned difficult to do so it's taking a long time. :-)
Andy
