FPGA Replay Board

[arnljot]

Thank you. I am working through emails.

I spent 7 days in the most amazing place on the planet, I am still completely spangled, covered in mud and glitter (and at the airport).
Normal service will be resumed asap
Cheers,
MikeJ

Seems like it's well deserved!

I'm so enthusiastic that I've already bought a 060 off ebay in lieu of the daughter card :-D

EDIT:
So, here are a few FAQ items that I've compiled

Q: Does the basic FGAArcade Replay support RTG?
A: Yes, the main board supports RTG. The soft CPU has some compatibility issues so until these are resolved the 68060 on the daughterboard is required.
Hopefully this will be improved.
Source

Q: Is it possible or will it be possible to run Atari ST(E)/falcon core on FPGAA?
A: Yes, the Atari core is the reason mikej built this board in the first place.
Source

Q: Is it possible to add support for the PS3 controller?
A: The PS3 controller protocol is pretty well understood, so it could certainly be done without too much trouble. Hopefully somebody will pick it up when the code is pushed out.
Source

Q: What does the basic Replay board support currently of USB devices?
A: The current core is very close to the original hardware, so only 9PIN digital.
There are analog inputs on the ARM which can be used in future.
The USB adapter adds keyboard and mouse, and can be extended to all sorts of stuff in future. Although hubs are supported in the current code.
Source

Q: Will there be an aga core for this or ecs only?
A: AGA, although there are some compatibility issues with it yet to be resolved.
Source

Q: What can be configured in terms of features on the basic board?
A: IYou can set the Chip RAM from the OSD, assign the number of floppy drives and use whatever Kickstart file you want (I have 1.3 and 3.1 on my SD card).

To be honest, WHDLoad on a HDF file will take care of most games and then you can configure the machine to run the ADF of any "problem" games.
Source

Q: Is CD-rom (amiga cd32 style) implemented?
A: You mean the ability to mount an image of a CD as if it was in an actual CD ROM drive? No.

Once we have USB we can connect an exteral CD/DVD drive.
Source

Q: How high is it with the daughterboard?
A: The 68060 with heatsink does not exceed the height of the ps2 connectors - and certainly it is all within the atx panel height.
Source

Q: How big is the Replay board?
A: The board is half-size itx (17cm by 8cm), mechanical drawings are on the website, but mikej is going to put all the docs in a cleaner fashion on the new website. It fits in any itx/atx case with two screws.
Source

Q: Can I use a USB Keyb/Mouse instead of PS2?
A: mikej tried hard to get two USB connectors on the back, but it would not fit on the adapter.
You can cable off the internal header to an external connector, or use a hub. Note, in this batch nearly all the boards are PS/2 - the USB ones are really for Loriano's case. mikej doesn't have the modified ATX panel yet.

To do this, you need an optional VNC2 module. The VNC2 is an optional module which fits on the board instead of the PS2 connector and provides two USB host ports, and all the software muscle to drive them. It speaks mouse/keyboard SPI back to the FPGA which feeds it into the Amiga core.
Source  Source

Q: Can I use a real floppy drive with the Replay board?
A: Maybe in the future, user JimDrew is working on something called the SuperCard Pro
Source  Source

Q: How is firmware updated?
A: Firmware updates for the FPGA are as simple as copying the file on the SD card.
For the ARM code you push the menu button while powering on the board, and run an update program on your PC. The two will talk, the ARM flash is reprogrammed and you are good to go.

You can also update the bootloader this way too.
If you mess it up, there is a link on the board to reload a default boot loader.

The optional VNC2 module can be updated from a USB stick, and need to added before release.
Source Source

Q: Can I use any new modern LCD screen with the Replay board?
A: Just make sure you get a monitor that supports a 50Hz vertical refresh. Darrin of Amiga.org use a couple of ViewSonic models with his Minimig and FPGA Arcade.
Source

Q: Where I can buy/order one of these?
A: Send an e-mail to mikej at mikej@at@fpga_no*spam?arcade.com or order one from Amedia Computer France, their website is http://amiga.amedia-computer.com
Source Source

Q: What does it cost?
A: he price for the current boards is 199Euro + VAT for the non-composite/svhs version and 229Euro +VAT with. VAT in Sweden is 25%
Source

To be continued (I came as far as page 177)...

[Faranheit]

Hi all there,

Q: Where I can buy/order one of these?
You can also send us a mail for ordering it since we the agreement from Mike directly !
The price at our company is 289 euros for the SVHS version of the FPGA Arcade version (VAT INCLUDED)

We also propose a full assembled machine with a Vesa compatible MiniITX case at 479 euros instead of 529 euros (VAT INCLUDED)

Don't hesitate to get in touch with us at : http://amiga.amedia-computer.com
Or send a mail to : contact@amedia-computer.com / laurent@amedia-computer.com

Thanks Lionel 'Braver' and Laurent 'Faranheit'
Amedia Computer France

[yssing]

Fahrenheit, You  a lot of potential customers by not having an English version of your site

[Faranheit]

Hi Yissing

The site http://amiga.amedia-computer.com should appear in english.

Don't go on the generic site http://www.amedia-computer.com which is not translated this one.

Only the Amiga part is translated : http://amiga.amedia-computer.com

Thanks, Lionel 'Braver' and Laurent 'Faranheit'

[arnljot]

Both images and text appear in French for me on the Amiga specific site.

Sounds like you need to hunt down a bug.

[Faranheit]

Hi,

We'll investigate

With Opera in english, the site appears in english

See you later
Thanks for the report

[yssing]

Well I can tell you that firefox, chrome and IE only displays the french site

If you only test in opera, then you really need to expand your test suites just a bit

[Lord Aga]

Opera here. Still only in French

[Faranheit]

Hi

Thanks for your bug report, Lionel is hardly investigating this.

We'll solve this quickly

In the meantime, if you have any question, don't hesitate to send us a mail at contact@amedia-computer.com

Thanks, Lionel 'Braver' and Laurent 'Faranheit'

[arnljot]

I've updated the "where to buy" question to this:

Q: Where I can buy/order one of these?
A: Send an e-mail to mikej at mikej@at@fpga_no*spam?arcade.com or order one from Amedia Computer France, their website is http://amiga.amedia-computer.com
Source Source

[JimDrew]

Q: Can I use a real floppy drive with the Replay board?

 A: Maybe in the future, user JimDrew is working on something called the SuperCard Pro

Last year I designed SuperCard Pro, which was suppose to be a simple flux level disk copier that lets you use PC floppy drives to duplicate Commodore 64 and Amiga disks.  That turned into a 25ns resolution disk copier that can duplicate virtually every format and also create images of disks (flux level, so copy protection included).  In the last 45 days I caved in to temptation and redesigned the hardware to allow it to not only be a disk copier, but also be a floppy drive emulator. It has a micro-SD media card to load disk images.  It has two high speed serial ports that can be used to control it, transfer raw data, get directories, etc.

I am waiting to get the FPGA board from Mike, and I can look at exactly what needs to happen on the FPGA side to fetch data.  I think the best way to handle this would be interface the data stream into the PAULA's data separator (providing PAULA is emulated at a low level).  If there is PAULA emulation, then there should be no problems running any type of copy protection you can throw at it.  If the PAULA emulation is limited, it still might be possible to inject the properly timed MFM data into the system.

I wrote many disk copiers and designed several disk copying hardware devices for the Amiga, so I am extremely familiar with what is necessary to accomplish this.  So, hopefully I can work with Mike to provide not only emulated disk support, but also real floppy drive support since SuperCard Pro can do both.

[VuData]

Hi Jim,

Any possibility of this being expanded to include other platforms on the FPGA Arcade (e.g C64/ST)?

[whiteb]

Hi Yissing

The site http://amiga.amedia-computer.com should appear in english.

Don't go on the generic site http://www.amedia-computer.com which is not translated this one.

Only the Amiga part is translated : http://amiga.amedia-computer.com

Thanks, Lionel 'Braver' and Laurent 'Faranheit'

Sorry, but amiga.amedia is not translated for me, its still in Frog for me. (Australia).
And the parts that are in English, have no mention of FPGAReplay.

[Faranheit]

Hi

Only the first page with the promotion pictures appears in  french, the other sections are translated (account, products,  informations ...).

The promotion's pictures are being translated today

Thanks, Lionel 'Braver' and Laurent 'Faranheit'

[mikej]

Update - I had to go directly to China for a few days from the UK.
I'll be back home end of this week. I have a number of boards ready to ship now and the test rig is set up. I have returned some of the bad power regulators to the vendor here and will get some replacements which will hopefully work - so we can ship more boards.

The ARM software with dynamic menu system (for different cores) is progressing thanks to the German R&D team

So, finally I feel we are just about there. I will do a full code release and then it's going to get a bit crazy. I have more than 10 people porting cores to the board

I will switch from the Amiga to the Atari core soon, with the aim of getting that out before end of July.

Note, all revB boards shipped already can be updated with the new bootloader and arm code - we don't leave anybody behind

p.s. because I am in China I will be in the bar lots so sorry for not keeping up with emails...
MikeJ

[freqmax]

Is it going to be possible to switch from say Amiga to AtariST etc.. without switching the SD-card?