FPGA Replay Board

[mikej]

Please send me an email.
Yes, shopping cart is going to happen.
I have boards everywhere at the moment, but I do have a bit of a backlog.
Unfortunately I am going back to China for a week which will delay shipping. I will go and see the factory and make sure more are on the way though, which is good.
/MikeJ

[freqmax]

How is your order book vs manufactured boards ratio?

[wizard66]

Please send me an email.
Yes, shopping cart is going to happen.
I have boards everywhere at the moment, but I do have a bit of a backlog.
Unfortunately I am going back to China for a week which will delay shipping. I will go and see the factory and make sure more are on the way though, which is good.
/MikeJ

Any A.T.A for the new core mike ?

[espskog]

New core....uhmmmmmmmmm...can't wait :-)
I will bring my box to Poland in february so we can play GF2 on the Hotel TV. Hopefully, the new core will be out by then so I can use the HDMI input on the hotel tv.

[Everblue]

How is your order book vs manufactured boards ratio?

1000 to 1

[ShapeShifter]

Any A.T.A for the new core mike ?

Now, now - don't go bugging MikeJ about the new core. You're not supposed to do that.  That's my job :lol:

Seriously, I'm kind of laid back about waiting for it, because I know MikeJ will deliver on his promises, and he won't keep us waiting longer than necessary.  There's something very refreshing about that: someone meaning what they say, and delivering on it, in this community

When you think about it, Mike has probably written more code - and designed more hardware - than even Amiga, Inc. have done over the past 12 years*!

(* not counting hardware / software produced by third parties)

[freqmax]

The core can be fixed later, better get the hardware out.

[amigadave]

Please send me an email.
Yes, shopping cart is going to happen.
I have boards everywhere at the moment, but I do have a bit of a backlog.
Unfortunately I am going back to China for a week which will delay shipping. I will go and see the factory and make sure more are on the way though, which is good.
/MikeJ

Is my understanding correct, that you will eventually (I mean in a few more months, not a few more years) be able to automate, I mean have the pcb manufacturer, or component assembler, do more of the work in producing your Replay boards, so that you can produce more of them and meet the demand?

Will you be able to produce 100 to 200 boards at a time, so that everyone that wants one will have a chance to buy one?  Have you considered partnering with AmigaKit, or Vesalia, or even ACube to help you with funding to get more of the Replay boards manufactured and sold?

I just want to see you succeed big with this product and the more people using them means more developers will be tinkering with them and improving the core code and possibly making other expansions for the Replay.  It is a great product and I think it can sell in the thousands, if marketed correctly to a wide variety of hobbyist, including Amiga, Atari, Arcade games, C64 and many other groups of retro users.  The expansion connector was a great idea, good luck MikeJ.

Edit:

In short, the FPGA Arcade Replay board is one of the few products in the Amiga community that I see great potential for selling to other groups and thereby becoming more of a mass marketed product that could actually be sold in large chain stores, once it is perfected and packaged to properly attract a wider audience.

[kedawa]

This is never going to be a mass market item.  I don't see that as a negative, though.

[Haranguer]

This is never going to be a mass market item.

I've gotta disagree with that.  Retro is in right now.  This thing's got potential.

[vidarh]

Will you be able to produce 100 to 200 boards at a time, so that everyone that wants one will have a chance to buy one?

If I remember correctly Mike has said previously that the next run would be 500 or so. Of course he could've changed plans since then.

[freqmax]

Partnerships involves entanglements. Better that mikej keeps 100% controll without the company politics.
Better wait for next good batch, than get 1000s of units with corporate BS.

[ShapeShifter]

This is never going to be a mass market item.  I don't see that as a negative, though.

It doesn't have to be mass market to be very, very successful, though.  I see the Replay potentially succeeding in the same way the Amiga succeeded: it may not saturate the entire market, but it will find itself achieving some real success and popularity within certain niches.  It's already exciting the Amiga world; there's also the Atari world, the C= 64 fans, arcade and console fans, etc.

The nature of the Replay itself also means it has more potential than simply being whatever retro system you want it to be; it can become any system you wish it to be; retro with modern elements, a convenient development platform bridging two different technologies, etc.

We won't know exactly where and how the Replay will distinguish itself until it has started to ship in real numbers, however, and people get their hands on it and start to mess around with it.  That's when we'll see the real excitement and ipotential take off, IMO.

[CrazyApe]

It doesn't have to be mass market to be very, very successful, though.  I see the Replay potentially succeeding in the same way the Amiga succeeded: it may not saturate the entire market, but it will find itself achieving some real success and popularity within certain niches.  It's already exciting the Amiga world; there's also the Atari world, the C= 64 fans, arcade and console fans, etc.

The nature of the Replay itself also means it has more potential than simply being whatever retro system you want it to be; it can become any system you wish it to be; retro with modern elements, a convenient development platform bridging two different technologies, etc.

We won't know exactly where and how the Replay will distinguish itself until it has started to ship in real numbers, however, and people get their hands on it and start to mess around with it.  That's when we'll see the real excitement and ipotential take off, IMO.

Well said,

While I have a soft spot for the Amiga (having gone the VIC-20 -> C64 -> Amiga route) the retro aspect alone likely wouldn't sway me to purchase. The fact though is this hardware can be almost anything you want it to be, it's the perfect FPGA dev board for alot of different applications.

I've been looking at FPGA dev boards for quite a while, and they are all either too sparse on features (power supply + FPGA + pin headers is all you get), to full of features (I don't need 8 LED's, 8 switches, numeric keypad, LCD connectors, and array of 7 segment displays, I really don't), to expensive, or to proprietary.

What I want is an FPGA dev board that I can load descent sized designs into, has some on-board ram, video out, and some sort of expansion header. The Replay Board meets that requirement very well, and that's why I've asked mike to put me on the list for a board. It's of interest to many markets I would expect.

It'll be interesting once a few more boards are in the field, more people become aware of them, videos start popping up on youtube and such places. It won't be long before it's noticed by hardware forums and the like which will spike more interest.

A key ingredient the Amiga had was that in the market that existed back then, it could basically sell it's self, lucky for the Amiga since Commodore didn't do a great job marketing it. I feel the Replay Board is capable of selling it's self in the present market.

I'd like to see some crews from the Demo Scene pick it up and see what they can pump out of the chip with some HDL demo designs. It would go a long way toward changing the ideas what can be done, and what is done with FPGA hardware.

[freqmax]

I had the same thoughts for a long time..

[espskog]

It would be cool if some major company picked up the rights to use teh FPGA Replay board for other purposes aswell. Even if they did change the design a little, I bet the core could be adapter (or maybe even did not need adaption at all) so the world could get a nice FPGA Replay board for whatever-use whilst use Amigans could load our beloved minimig-core on it and use it for our own purpose. That way the production could be streamlind by someone else, while the retro-user gets a niftly board to use and Mike would not have to do so much production-stuff.

What we need now is decent cores which is usable for every retro-fan out there, so that the question of what board to use is not important, but what fpga board has the MOST cores out there which are maintained and fully working.

I think the key factor to succeed in the fpga-board fight is simply how many cores we get and how well they work. More cores = more users = more money = more development =

We need to get an Atari Core at least to get the Atari guys to jump on this board. Hoperfully, the fpga-replay board won't be promoted as a "Amiga Board". We need ANY user out there, no matter what core they like to run. And we need people to make and maintain good cores.

Personally, I want a C64 core aswell. The ones out there is not quite there yet.
It would be nice if FPGA board developers could concentrate on the cores instead. I would love to pay for a nice C64 core -- but I would not like to pay to have a proprietary fpga board to run it on when I already have my Replay board :-D

Then you have the fpga board which are proprietary like the Chameleon. It's a great product, but it will have to compete with minimig, replay and any other design out there. And frankly, there is NOT enough money out there to make all FPGA board happy. Just scrap the crap and focus on the best board and make cores for that. If you can sell a Core for a $10/30 fee to be a registered user (and gets updates etc), then that would be a great idea. I think all FPGA board users should contribute with a little cash to the developer of the core so that they can continue to develop it and make it better.

After all, they do it on their spare time....

Maybe someone could setup a FPGA CORE wiki and have links to all the cores and keep track of them and have links to download etc ? That would have been nice. A CORE LIBRARY ... not just for machines, but also for ARCADE CORES or any other core for that sake.

Keep up the great work!!!!!