FPGA Replay Board

[Franko]

No,no, no. Salt water is what you use on defective nuclear reactors.

Oh.. Oh... Iggy's going to go off on one his save the world rambles again...

[Darrin]

No,no, no. Salt water is what you use on defective nuclear reactors.

Damn, I always get the Minimig and Nuclear Reactors confused.  No wonder I can't run my house off my Minimg.  

[freqmax]

You can immerse it in fluorocarbons like fluorinert. Even alcohol, or mineral oil works. Just be careful with the lighter....

[Franko]

You can immerse it in fluorocarbons like fluorinert. Even alcohol, or mineral oil works. Just be careful with the lighter....

Gawd... what a waste of good alcohol, much better to immerse ones self in it...

[ChaosLord]

Gawd... what a waste of good alcohol, much better to immerse ones self in it...

:laughing:

[freqmax]

Gawd... what a waste of good alcohol, much better to immerse ones self in it...

It has to be pure alcohol or else the ingredients that makes it taste will stick to the circuitboard wires ..

So the tasty variant can be used for other purposes

[Iggy]

It has to be pure alcohol or else the ingredients that makes it taste will stick to the circuitboard wires ..

So the tasty variant can be used for other purposes

Is it possible to make 100% pure alcohol? Mineral oil sounds easier.
Say anybody want some Fukushima spring water? 10,000% pure!

[Louis Dias]

Ah, cheers for the info.  Is the Natami FPGA vastly more expensive as a result?  I certainly wasn't expecting the Natami to be priced around the EUR250-350 mark.

MikeJ has said on the Natami forum that his basic board (not including the 060+daughter card) will be 200-220 euros.  In that configuration it can achieve '040 like performance...from what I've seen.

I can't speak for the Natami team on pricing but the essential difference is you get alot of what's on the daughter card of the Replay and an '050 and a faster fpga and 512MB of memory in total.  Both boards are 6 layers so the costs are basically the same but you are getting and paying for more components on the Natami without the need for the daughter card.  Only developers will get the '060 card to get the ball rolling.

But again, I stress that there seems to be an fpga Amiga for everyone's budget and target performance.

The advantages of the Replay are multi-platform emulation.  This is something the Natami will not do other than thru software apps.

1) Minimig
2) Replay (040ish)
3) Replay + '060 card (expensive)
4) Natami + '060 card (expensive)
near future:
5) Natami (050)
future:
6) Natami (070)

Replay will come to market first for sure.

On the Natami forums, the Atari Firebee team are keen on using Natami as a future Atari platform as well.  They aren't completely happy with the Firebee hardware in the long run...it seems.  But that could just be a vocal minority.  The time for competition is at an end.  Co-operation is the future, imho.

[freqmax]

The purpose of the 68060 board is to reverse engineer the CPU asfair?, so it really doesn't matter too much unless that's the purpose.

[vidarh]

The purpose of the 68060 board is to reverse engineer the CPU asfair?, so it really doesn't matter too much unless that's the purpose.

I don't think need to reverse engineer it? All the timings etc. as well as fairly detailed block diagrams are well documented both from official documentation and years of testing, and the N68050 is according to their team already more advanced in many ways.

I believe it's more as a development tool while they finish up the 050 and verify it's working properly

[Forcie]

The purpose of the 68060 board is to reverse engineer the CPU asfair?, so it really doesn't matter too much unless that's the purpose.

Hello, this is André from the Natami Team.

lou_dias and vidarh kinda have the right idea here. No, the 68060 CPU card has nothing to do with reverse engineering. But it is useful in many ways.

First and foremost, the N68050 core is developed on a separate system and is not integrated in the Natami FPGA yet. This makes it absolutely critical having a physical CPU to get things up and running at first.
Secondly, our softcore CPU does not come with a built in MMU, since that would slow down the entire CPU too much to be acceptable. A MMU might not be very important for a normal user of AmigaOS, but a developer might want to use a MMU for developing and debugging purposes. Likewise, if you want to experiment with other operating systems that demand a MMU, the 060 card is there.
Thirdly, it is good having a physical Motorola CPU for comparision of compatibility and performance, both between a Natami system and an Amiga classic and between Natami systems using different CPU:s.
Fourth(ly?), The 68060 card will not be disabled once the softcore CPU is done, but will theoretically be able to be used as a kind of accelerator for certain tasks, providing that software is written for it.

The first stand-alone Natami board design actually had a physical 68060 directly onboard. But this design was scrapped a few years ago when the softcore project started.

Sorry for hijacking the thread with a long answer

[amigadave]

Hello, this is André from the Natami Team.

lou_dias and vidarh kinda have the right idea here. No, the 68060 CPU card has nothing to do with reverse engineering. But it is useful in many ways.

First and foremost, the N68050 core is developed on a separate system and is not integrated in the Natami FPGA yet. This makes it absolutely critical having a physical CPU to get things up and running at first.
Secondly, our softcore CPU does not come with a built in MMU, since that would slow down the entire CPU too much to be acceptable. A MMU might not be very important for a normal user of AmigaOS, but a developer might want to use a MMU for developing and debugging purposes. Likewise, if you want to experiment with other operating systems that demand a MMU, the 060 card is there.
Thirdly, it is good having a physical Motorola CPU for comparision of compatibility and performance, both between a Natami system and an Amiga classic and between Natami systems using different CPU:s.
Fourth(ly?), The 68060 card will not be disabled once the softcore CPU is done, but will theoretically be able to be used as a kind of accelerator for certain tasks, providing that software is written for it.

The first stand-alone Natami board design actually had a physical 68060 directly onboard. But this design was scrapped a few years ago when the softcore project started.

Sorry for hijacking the thread with a long answer

Most people here would love to have more detailed answers from the Natami team members.  Trying to find information by sifting through the large number of threads on the Natami forums is difficult, plus it is hard to tell which posts there are made by Natami team members, or Natami fanatics making inaccurate statements based on wishful thinking.

So, feel free to hijack threads here with correct information about the Natami project any time.  I for one would like to see more frequent news updates on the Natami project that are straight from a team member.

[Darrin]

Most people here would love to have more detailed answers from the Natami team members.  Trying to find information by sifting through the large number of threads on the Natami forums is difficult, plus it is hard to tell which posts there are made by Natami team members, or Natami fanatics making inaccurate statements based on wishful thinking.

So, feel free to hijack threads here with correct information about the Natami project any time.  I for one would like to see more frequent news updates on the Natami project that are straight from a team member.

I agree 100%.

When it comes to Natami information, it is hard to know who is actually stating it, whether it is fact or fiction or even how old it is and what board they're talking about (current or previous versions).

Please keep us updated.  

[Darrin]

On the Natami forums, the Atari Firebee team are keen on using Natami as a future Atari platform as well.  They aren't completely happy with the Firebee hardware in the long run...it seems.  But that could just be a vocal minority.  The time for competition is at an end.  Co-operation is the future, imho.

Well that would be good for the production run as the more units produced in a batch = lower cost per unit.

This is a handy feature of the FPGA as Mike will not be selling them just to the Amiga community, it will also make a great board for people developing other cores.

[TheGoose]

@Forcie

Thanks for the input and identifying yourself, is helpful. No hijacking IMO, it's all about new FPGA Amiga machines, and all good news.

So, sounds safe to shop for a 68060 no matter how you cut it. And the softcore + real 68K together as an "accelerator" or for other tasks, kinda reminds me of the 68K + PPC living and working together on the Phase 5 boards. Well, it sure isn't boring hardware anyway.

[espskog]

Can't think why not.  I left my Minimig v1.1 running for over 32 days once when I forgot to switch it off before heading to Brazil.

My default paranoia for old classic HW being a hazard when running unattended has gotten to me That's all..hehe.:hammer: