Scanning the original chips

[freqmax]

Anyone tried to scan the original Amiga chips in any way to recreate the logic matrix?

NMOS, but what nm process and die size has been used for OCS Agnus, Denise, Paula etc?

(This also means that even broken chips are worth keeping!)

[mongo]

Probably more trouble than it's worth.

Jeri Ellsworth has the schematics for the OCS chip set. Would be nice if they could be made available to the general public.

[Zac67]

You'd probably have a hard time finding someone still manufacturing in this process... The inner workings are pretty well known and have been replicated in UAE and Minimig.

[bloodline]

These guys have done a few chips already (6502, 6800, 68000, SID, etc...), they have decapped, scanned and then recorded the logic layout... so they would be the first place to call :

http://visual6502.org/

-edit- just noticed that these guys are working out the entire logic for the VCS 2600... So given how that machine is related the the Amiga1000 they might be keen to do the Amiga


If on the other hand, you happen to have a ton of money, Chipworks Inc will do a private scan of the chips for you and give you everything you need

[bloodline]

Looks like the visual6502 guys already have Agnus, Denise, Paula and Gary in their chip collection... I guess we just need to harass them into scanning them

[mikej]

They are scheduled to be scanned.
I am far more interested in the continuing polygonization (is that a word?) of the 68K - which I am working on.
Getting the exact internal microcode (note, it is split into two tables to compress it) will be very interesting and reduce the size of the softcores considerably.
/MikeJ

[bloodline]

They are scheduled to be scanned.
I am far more interested in the continuing polygonization (is that a word?) of the 68K - which I am working on.
Getting the exact internal microcode (note, it is split into two tables to compress it) will be very interesting and reduce the size of the softcores considerably.
/MikeJ

No idea when they will do them though, I can't be much help to them so I haven't made contact with them.

I also am keen to see the "polygonisation" of these chips not for recreation purposes (since I think MiniMIG and CloneA are probably a better approach), simply so I can see the choices the original design team made all those years ago

On the other hand some FPGAs with the original net lists on them would be super awesome...

[psxphill]

Getting the exact internal microcode (note, it is split into two tables to compress it) will be very interesting and reduce the size of the softcores considerably.

I thought we had the microcode already, I'll ask around in case it's not public yet.
 
You can find the microcode in the 68000 patent, but we know it's got some wrong values.

[mikej]

Let me know if you have it.
I have the details from the patents, but it's not terribly useful.
With the die scan we can see how the ops are decoded. It's a very neat design, all of the "strangeness" comes out as a result of implementation.
/MikeJ

[trekiej]

Leading Edge Retro, I like it.

[Rodomoc]

It seems like Individual Computers did some detailed chip analysis at one time as well. If I am remembering correctly, various historical Clone-A documentation seemed to elude to this. It would seem logical that the data they collected was used to develop the various add-on cards like Indivision and the like, but do not quote me on any of this as my memory is more than a bit foggy on the subject.

[Thorham]

What I want to know is how much it would cost to do OCS/ECS/AGA in ASICs using the original layouts?

[partycentralpartygirl]

What I want to know is how much it would cost to do OCS/ECS/AGA in ASICs using the original layouts?

Jeri told me that it would be in the neighborhood of 100k if I remember correctly. I had 10k so I asked her if it would be enough. Unfortunately it was like 10 times that amount.

[Digiman]

This begs the question if you committed to producing at least a million units minimum how much it would cost per unit to produce a working 100% compatible classic Amiga motherboard of A500 and A1200 specs?

(no case/keyboard/psu/floppy etc)

[freqmax]

You'd probably have a hard time finding someone still manufacturing in this process... The inner workings are pretty well known and have been replicated in UAE and Minimig.

There's absolutely no need for anyone to manufacture in the original process. The process size matters for the scanning procedure.

What is known about the inner workings of these chips is a reverse engineering work process, it's very good. But it's not perfect.

This begs the question if you committed to producing at least a million units minimum how much it would cost per unit to produce a working 100% compatible classic Amiga motherboard of A500 and A1200 specs?

The PCB has already been done. So for the chips you seem to need 100k - 200k USD in addition each chip maybe cost 1 USD per chip?
Btw, have a look att EFF DES cracker.

I am far more interested in the continuing polygonization (is that a word?) of the 68K - which I am working on.

How does the polygonization work, and is it reliable in determining the logic function?
Being able to use nitric acid, photograph (using microscope?), and then use algorithms to transform pictures into HDL-code seems really nice.

Is the 68k compatibility a huge issue?, 68000 + 68020?, maybe more critical than the custom chips?