Hello, this is André from the Natami Team. I would like to try to answer some of the questions.
Yes, the very first batch of Natami MX boards just arrived at Thomas Hirsch's place. Now a testing period will follow to ensure the hardware design works as planned, heavily testing the new memory system. The next step after that will be getting the onboard PCI bus and PCI devices (IDE bus and CF slot, Gbit Ethernet, USB2.0) up and running.
There will still take quite some time until we can start selling boards to the public, but at least now there will be frequent updates as the slow and tedious part (PCB design phase) now is finished, providing that the PCB does work as intended, which we will see in the upcoming weeks.
Regarding the thread title, the main objective of the Natami Project has always been to provide a great system to run AmigaOS 3.x on. For this purpose we have gotten our hands on a couple of 3.1 licenses to bundle with the boards.
On the other hand, we have no Commodore Kickstart ROM:s to provide. We are currently discussing if it would be a good idea to provide the means (bootable floppy + null modem cable) to let the user easily dump the ROM from, for example, his Amiga 1200. For people who do not have an Amiga, the best solution will probably be to buy Amiga Forever and use the provided ROM images (we are aware of the encryption issue).
Making use of all of Natamis advanced features from within OS 3.x requires quite some work though. This development process will be resumed once the new boards are up and running. Some important points will be hacking a monitor file/graphics.library to make use of the new native screenmodes properly, or making a driver for the onboard Realtek ethernet chip, for example.
However, we do also look with excitement towards the rapid and impressive developments of the AROS-68k port. The prospect of compatibility with 1.x-era software as well as 3.x-era software that Toni Wilen has as his goal is very promising.
We do hope that AROS-68k will be a nice OS to run on the Natami in the future, and the chance of having a free, open source, and actively developed OS running as compared to hacking and patching OS3.x binaries in absurdum does indeed sound like a better tomorrow.
For most Natami users, there will probably be a hybrid stage when running OS3 patched with a lot of AROS code, like the AfA_OS initiative started by Bernd Roesch, is the most attractive choice. But AROS is advancing rapidly, and the 68k port might get out of the debug/compatibility testing stage and into the platform-specific optimisation stage pretty fast.
Regarding the price, it is not a good idea for anyone wanting to sell something to make a guess and then hope it will come true. Someone will always interpret that as a promise.
Yes, our production prices are pretty high. We have a very advanced FPGA compared to most of the similar projects, and this increases costs, and so does the many onboard components (USB2, LAN, proper legacy ports and headers) and the complicated six-layer PCB:s.
So the Natami will cost some more than the other Classic clones. However, if we would downgrade to a small cheap FPGA model and board design to reach the low prices some people are demanding, there would hardly be anything special about the Natami's performance compared to the alternatives. Personally, I think it is cool that you can go for a Minimig if you want something similar to an A500, a FPGAArcade if you want beefed up A1200-level hardware and other possibilities, and Natami if you want to go beyond that. All the options are there to choose from. Competition and plurality is good for the end user.
Anyway, we cannot know for sure yet what the final price for the MX boards will be. Good/bad deals on components and manufacturing means the price can fluctuate hundreds of euros up or down. And since we are not a big multinational company who can pour billions of dollars into a project to be able to say "This will be The Price! Make it so!", we can't tell you know. We will tell you when we know better.
He's right. The NatAmi will have a much larger FPGA than the MiniMig or even the Retro Replay board. It will probably cost around 750-850 Euros for the prototypes and only after the bugs are worked out will we have a Altera HardCopy version of the FPGA made (assuming that's still the most cost-effective technology for making fixed-functionality chips).
I won't speak for the price estimate, but I can say that a possible future HardCopy version will require some investor or financing to become reality. The MX boards will almost not generate any profit, and the little overhead there is will go to ensure being able to do warranty repairs and recouping some of the loads of money Thomas Hirsch has paid out of his own pockets to make this project a reality.
Also, the Natami030 and the Natami LX were the prototypes. The Natami MX will, if everything works out, be the first commercial board sold.
