New type of accelerator design?

[recidivist]

Exactly WHAT made  an AMIGA special ?

 I submit it was a combination of the OS and the custom chips for sound and video.And I submit the world-wide switch to digital video and audio makes those special Amiga chips  advantages irrelevant now.

 The Amiga OS can be rewritten to run on commodity hardware.It was done already with Amithlon,it can be done again.Amiga Forever  on modern PCs outruns original Amigas as well.

 It is silly of purists to reject Amiga OS x86  as not true Amiga because TRUE Amiga means maximim of 68060 cpu,16 meg RAM,etc. just as sold by Commodore,Escom,Quikpak .(A case can be made that PPC accelerator cards are in the spirit of the original Amiga.)How many insist Apple computers sold  since Apple's change of cpu are not truly  Apples?Would Commodore have switched cpu families ?

  Is not Amiga OS THE single defining difference now ?So it would be nice if Amiga OS would run on all widely available platforms,by which I mean x86,PPC , and whatever is in  super smartphones.I believe this is what Amiga,Inc. had as their vision but lacked the resources to do it.

[DyLucke]

Indeed, X86 architecture can't be Amiga... Amiga means more than a simple OS, if you want some kind of Amiga OS on your peecee install AROS.

Or even better, buy a X86, and put an Amiga sticker on it... Yeah you got a "real amiga".

Amiga is a complete architecture different from X86, Macs were different from X86 either, and Mac will turn to a bare OS, and some stylish manufacturer for PC users in a few years. Just in the way NEC wasted it's PC98 system.

I'm envous about atarians that really have clear X86 CAN'T be an Atari.

We have the Power architecture, Coldfire processors or even ARM... We don't need an X86...

A "great future" is ahead if every systems turns to X86... Bargh.

[Zac67]

Amiga Forever  on modern PCs outruns original Amigas as well.

by several(!) magnitudes...:juggler:

[SamuraiCrow]

by several(!) magnitudes...:juggler:

Only the JIT does.  The chipset emulation bogs down heavily when running software that pushes the limits.  Also, the JIT disables the possibility of debugging when writing new software so you have to disable the JIT when attempting to do so.

[swift240]

Lets say just for the minute that a super fast accelerator was complete.
Ok so here it is, hmmmmm I think it is fair to say the price would be staggering to say the least.
it would still be far cheaper to get an AMD athlon and go the Amikit or some other way for the penny for penny.

When it comes down to Amiga then we all have to pay HIGH prices, its to late for any kind of accelerator to come to the hight street or any other kind of street as far as Amiga goes.
Amiga = HIGH prices like it or not.

I would have thought the easy rout would be for an AMD Athlon take it from there, and far cheaper to.
Example USB card how much? , then see a bog standard USB card fo any PC far far lower priced.
So whats the money for the USB card or the drivers?

For me until some thing far more realistic comes along its my Athlon and Amikit.

So if any of you want a cheap up to date Amiga system forget it, it simply will never happen.

Unless a single chip design or near enough and a good set of heads in the company.
But so far all I have heard is the waiting game.................... waiting to be told it cant be done, waiting to be told its going to cost the earth, waiting to be told well certain parties are in talks, waiting to be told when hell freezes over.

Mike.

[B00tDisk]

A friend of mine who worked at the same IT mag as I does electronic design, FPGA work, etc. from time to time.  He said creating a card that had, say, a 1.2ghz Intel Atom on board that emulated any of the m68k family at a blistering pace was no problem.

Of course, getting such a beast to interface with the archaic, arcane and downright cryptic ins-and-outs of Amiga circuitry...that's another matter altogether!

[amigadave]

...............I  plan on thinning the herd here soon -have 15 or 20 Amigas and rarely use ANY of them anymore.Maybe I can raise enough funds for a SAM.

Warning!!! OFF TOPIC: To recidivist, or any other Amiga collector that has many Amiga computers that are not being used, please consider attempting to get your un-used Amiga computers into the hands of a new Amiga enthusiast.  It is not an easy task to get anyone interested in such a old and limited computer system, but there are a few exceptional people still out there that will find the Amiga an interesting diversion.  If we can find just one person who will continue their interest and become a programmer who writes code for AmigaOS3.x, AmigaOS4.x, MorphOS2.x, or AROS, then the effort we expend to give, auction, or sell our un-used Amiga computer systems to those special individuals will be well rewarded and a benefit to all of the Amiga community.

[alexh]

He said creating a card that had, say, a 1.2ghz Intel Atom on board that emulated any of the m68k family at a blistering pace was no problem.

Cept someone would have to write the emulation. Existing m68k emulators could be the basis but all the I/O do not really exist. Wont be a 10 min thing.

Of course, getting such a beast to interface with the archaic, arcane and downright cryptic ins-and-outs of Amiga circuitry...that's another matter altogether!

I bet it is financially not-viable.

[AmigaPixel]

@tone007
 It's off topic, but I am intrigued with your avatar, is that a Commodore Pet monitor with Workbench on the screen?

As for a new accelerator, I would love to see a new batch of 030, 040, 060 boards for all model Amigas. Although A1200 and A4000 seems like the best candidates. Just image if it were possible if you could get a new 060 board for your A1200 for about than 150 US dollars. I am dreaming but it doesn't make sense that they couldn't reproduce exsisting board designs in China for a reasonable cost. Even with smaller production runs. Then again there are other factors I am sure.

[tone007]

@tone007
 It's off topic, but I am intrigued with your avatar, is that a Commodore Pet monitor with Workbench on the screen?

It's an Educator 64, which is a standard C64 board in a PET case. In the pic it's running the Contiki OS (complete with telnet client, www browser and server, and plasma screensaver!)

[lapeno]

I would not bother emulating he 68k CPUs when they are available still (even if they are second hand). My plan is to use CPLD or FPGA to create the bridging device which is between the A1200 and the 68040/60 CPU. Towards the 68040/60 it is a bus arbiter while towards the A1200 motherboard it emulates a 68020 CPU's bus cycles. Beleive it or not the  A1200's Channel Z port is not a magical unknown area. You can find useful information on it if you read docs carefully.

For me the Amiga is the 68k architecture and not the PPCs. I don't want graphic card or any other CPU that is not 68k compatible. All I want is faster calculation and RAM. I don't want to make money out of this, I am just interested in FPGAs and digital circuits and this seems to be an interesting project to have fun.

[amigadave]

I would not bother emulating he 68k CPUs when they are available still (even if they are second hand). My plan is to use CPLD or FPGA to create the bridging device which is between the A1200 and the 68040/60 CPU. Towards the 68040/60 it is a bus arbiter while towards the A1200 motherboard it emulates a 68020 CPU's bus cycles. Beleive it or not the  A1200's Channel Z port is not a magical unknown area. You can find useful information on it if you read docs carefully.

For me the Amiga is the 68k architecture and not the PPCs. I don't want graphic card or any other CPU that is not 68k compatible. All I want is faster calculation and RAM. I don't want to make money out of this, I am just interested in FPGAs and digital circuits and this seems to be an interesting project to have fun.

I would like to see a softcore 680x0 CPU accelerator in FPGA made someday that can exceed the speed of the fastest 68060.  Is it possible to create a 68000 softcore (which is already available) that can run at 200MHz to 400MHz, or would  a 75MHz to 100MHz 68060 still be faster?

If a 68020 softcore is ever finished and could run at the same 200MHz to 400MHz or faster, would that be the logical direction for future Classic Amiga accelerators to look into?  I think this is what the Natami team is researching and trying to accomplish, or perhaps they are still looking at creating a more advanced 680x0 softcore design.


Hopefully when Jens completes his Clone-A project, there will be the possibility to create a new Amiga Clone computer completely from one or many FPGA chips that can operate many times faster than any Classic Amiga ever could.  Keeping the timing compatible with older Amiga programs and games, while at the same time increasing the speed of all of the Amiga custom chips that Clone-A has moved into FPGA chips will be a challenge that must be considered.

[AmigaPixel]

It's an Educator 64, which is a standard C64 board in a PET case. In the pic it's running the Contiki OS (complete with telnet client, www browser and server, and plasma screensaver!)

That is really cool. I would love to get a closer look at that set up! I am not familiar with Educator 64 or Contiki OS I'll have to read about that.

[recidivist]

Kind of like the  accelerator cards for my old Mac IIci ,etc.?

Leave everything original but the cpu and supercharge that?

Do they custom chips really calculate much or do they just display the data  presented by the cpu?

Don't some late programs require a 68030,web browsers?

I remember a rare but commercial 50 mhz 040 for the 400 and pretty sure there was a 80 mhz 040 for Apples.

a 200 mhz 680x0 would be awesome!

[SamuraiCrow]

@recidivist

The Amiga custom chips do an awful heckuva lot!  Trying to emulate them with OpenGL or DirectX would require a lot of CPU intervention or extensive shader support or both.

Apple used to overclock their 680x0 chips.

[Damion]

and pretty sure there was a 80 mhz 040 for Apples.

This was marketing, as by design the '040 internally ran 2x bus frequency. A lot of amiga '040 cards advertised at 40MHz also ran 80MHz internally (TekMagic, Cyberstorm, Apollo, etc), but 80MHz bus simply wasn't possible.