Excitement about NatAmi

[SamuraiCrow]

@Darrin

The reasons the LX board never went to market are as follows:

• The Altera Cyclone III FPGA was too small to hold all of the cores.
• The dual-bus architecture wasn't saturating more than half of the bandwidth of the DDR2 memories.
• The I/O pins could be put to better use with a single memory bus, making the whole thing smaller and cheaper.

The main deal-breaker for the LX board was that the 68050 is a larger core than the LX could hold with all of the rest of the features added to the SuperAGA core.

The MX board design has all of these things corrected and more.  The Cyclone IV chip has nearly twice the capacity of the earlier Cyclone III.

[Flashlab]

@Piru
I don't see similarities to the Boxer at all.  The BoXeR looks like a PC board with an fpga to emulate AGA and a connector for a 68k or PPC cpu.  Natami is a re-implimentation of an actual Amiga design with bottlenecks removed and enhancements made where they can be.

In all fairness an FPGA that emulates AGA (and more) is exactly what Natami is. Not that this is a bad thing IMHO but there are similarities with the Boxer and Natami project. They both want to create an update to the Classic Amiga. I hope that where Boxer failed Natami won't.

[Piru]

@Piru
I don't see similarities to the Boxer at all.  The BoXeR looks like a PC board with an fpga to emulate AGA and a connector for a 68k or PPC cpu.  Natami is a re-implimentation of an actual Amiga design with bottlenecks removed and enhancements made where they can be.

Quite obviously I was not talking about technical similarities. What is remarkably similar is the drag generated by the feature creep.

[haywirepc]

I can't remember when I first heard about natami, but I'm sure it was years and years ago. "Feature creep" is an understatement for what happened here. I used to check in every once in awhile to see if a board release date was announced. I gave up a year ago, and its interesting to see a year has passed and still no boards.
 
I wish them the best, but I still don't see any info on the site for when they will have working boards for sale. I doubt it will ever come to light but I'm still hopeful it may some day.
 
In the mean time, UAE works fine, and its alot cheaper.
 
Steven

[Louis Dias]

Quite obviously I was not talking about technical similarities. What is remarkably similar is the drag generated by the feature creep.

Right now I'm counting about 6 months to add ethernet, USB...which were previously to be optionally supported via PCI...and more memory.  These are the final features from a physical standpoint, everything else is done inside a fpga and "features" can/will be added as implemented.

For reference, the "MiniMig with AGA" thread will be 2 years old this coming January.  Please don't knock one while praising the other.  There were times when a whole month or two went by without an update from MikeJ.  His board has also been in development a long time but only "discovered" by this community within the last 2 years.

The goals of creating an "A5000+"-caliber machine are far more complex than simply emulating an A500 with an '0X0 accelerator.

I don't see the situation as having a problem of feature creep but simply the reality of accepting what features a new PC must have to be usable out of the box.  Ethernet and USB are standard on any PC, why not on a new Amiga...?

[Franko]

I sincerely hope that the Natami does come to fruition, from what I've learned about it so far it to me would be the perfect modern Amiga, good things come to those who wait...

(just hurry it up a wee bit please, some of us are getting on a bit you know...

[Piru]

Right now I'm counting about 6 months to add ethernet, USB...which were previously to be optionally supported via PCI...and more memory.  These are the final features from a physical standpoint, everything else is done inside a fpga and "features" can/will be added as implemented.

Assuming there are no bugs in the ever more complicated HW.

For reference, the "MiniMig with AGA" thread will be 2 years old this coming January.  Please don't knock one while praising the other.  There were times when a whole month or two went by without an update from MikeJ.  His board has also been in development a long time but only "discovered" by this community within the last 2 years.

I don't see much feature creep dragging his project.

The goals of creating an "A5000+"-caliber machine are far more complex than simply emulating an A500 with an '0X0 accelerator.

Especially when your goal posts keep moving constantly.

I don't see the situation as having a problem of feature creep but simply the reality of accepting what features a new PC must have to be usable out of the box. Ethernet and USB are standard on any PC, why not on a new Amiga...?

Lack of resources. For instance USB support adds insane amount of extra work. Why? Just because you don't want to use PS/2 like the other projects?

[Iggy]

Thomas, Gunnar and the rest of the Natami team probably could have released something awile ago if they'd stopped moving the target.
I still think using a real 68060 would make more sense than incorporating the CPU into the FPGA. And now they're talking vector units and other additions.
Good grief! What is the point?

[Bennymee]

They are for different markets for sure.

The Replay (fpgaarcade) board will have a connector for standard arcade controllers (JAMMA or is it JAMBA) and is not specifically for the Amiga market.  It can be a slightly souped up Amiga for sure but it's performance is below the goals of NATAMI.

Natami is designed to be an Amiga PC.  It will have a PCI slot(s) and a cpu slot, ethernet and USB and 256MB or ram or more.   I can't recall if it will have SATA or PATA IDE.

here is a quote from Thomas the designer:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=6¬e=28597&z=Xyqlpy

I'd much rather have ethernet and USB onboard rather than have to waste 2 PCI slots for them.
This is a positive delay.

Add another 8+ months delay I would say and why invent the wheel again, there are Ethernet / usb / firewire  combocards on the market. Why not add another PCI slot ? Just pop in a USB3 card and you're ready again, without redesign, aside from the drivers offcourse.

And if FPGA's become cheaper, add a new FPGA to the Natami and add Gigabit/Fast-ethernet VHDL-code to the core.

[Hattig]

At least the MiniMig with AGA work has resulted in (so far) an open-source 68000 core that operates at 28MHz (in the FPGAArcade) and performs like a 56MHz 68030, with more enhancements to come.

I look forward to the Natami 68050 as it does sound very excellent, but a fully working standalone board could be quite a way from being complete and ready to buy. And I will buy it when it comes out.

But Natami is a far more ambitious project - not only doing their own Amiga hardware implementation from scratch, but also a full, advanced 68k core.

Minimig was announced a very long time ago now - time passes quickly :-( - so patience is what is required.

[persia]

@Darrin

Specs like "a PCI slot(s)" don't build much confidence in the idea that they are anywhere near completion or that even the specs are agreed upon, so they had to stick an optional plural in, just in case....

[Hattig]

Assuming there are no bugs in the ever more complicated HW. I don't see much feature creep dragging his project.

Especially when your goal posts keep moving constantly.

Lack of resources. For instance USB support adds insane amount of extra work. Why? Just because you don't want to use PS/2 like the other projects?

How much effort is adding a PCI USB controller to a board when you've already designed the PCI bus interface? The same goes for ethernet. It's hardly "insane" in my opinion.

And Natami without USB would be a strange beast given that it's meant to be a more up to date classic Amiga, and USB stacks exist for the Amiga already, and most peripherals are USB connected?

I think that the Natami people have realised about feature creep, although they did get carried away in the past with things like that 3D core. They cut back the 68070 initial plans to the 68050 too, which shows the ability to cut back to more attainable targets.

And bugs? It's an FPGA, they can get these sorted out down the line when they turn up. As long as the first release can run Aros 68k, AmigaOS 3.x, DPaint and many (if not all) AGA games and OCS/ECS games that great.

[Hattig]

@Darrin

Specs like "a PCI slot(s)" don't build much confidence in the idea that they are anywhere near completion or that even the specs are agreed upon, so they had to stick an optional plural in, just in case....

There's a riser card to turn 1 PCI slot into multiple slots - a common feature back in the day of PCI if you are inclined to think this is a hack of any sort.

[persia]

Ever hear of printers, scanners, cameras, mp3 players and the like?  USB is for more than just keyboards.  USB is not a luxury, now bluetooth might be a luxury, but it would be nice

I suppose they wouldn't absolutely need the ethernet port, most of my computers just use the wifi anyway.

Lack of resources. For instance USB support adds insane amount of extra work. Why? Just because you don't want to use PS/2 like the other projects?

[Bennymee]

How much effort is adding a PCI USB controller to a board when you've already designed the PCI bus interface? The same goes for ethernet. It's hardly "insane" in my opinion.

And Natami without USB would be a strange beast given that it's meant to be a more up to date classic Amiga, and USB stacks exist for the Amiga already, and most peripherals are USB connected?

I think that the Natami people have realised about feature creep, although they did get carried away in the past with things like that 3D core. They cut back the 68070 initial plans to the 68050 too, which shows the ability to cut back to more attainable targets.

And bugs? It's an FPGA, they can get these sorted out down the line when they turn up. As long as the first release can run Aros 68k, AmigaOS 3.x, DPaint and many (if not all) AGA games and OCS/ECS games that great.

Not much effort, but the designer said he removed 1 PCI and added USB/Ethernet option onboard.

[orb85750]

Sure I read somewhere that it would probably cost about the same as a SAM

Where was that stated, and by whom?