@ redrumloa
Are you actually thinking of starting a new company to develop new hardware for the "classic" Amiga market? Wow! Are you thinking of living on this, or will it be more "a work of love"?
A bold mission nevertheless, since the few classics still not in the closet are probably dying in an increasing pase.
And just out of curiousity, who are "we"?
redrumloa wrote:
I'll start first.
-> I'd like a new PPC accelerator for classic Amigas at a reasonable price.
We are actually evaluating it, but to be completely honest it's not likely to happen. The cost of R&D would probably never get recouped, even if OS4 became a smash hit on classic boxes:-(
It could perhaps be made "the Eyetech" way; buying a batch of pre-made boards from outside the community and sell them here? Wasn't the SharkPPC (at least the first "versions") very similar to a certain Mac PCI based CPU upgrade? The software part might be a nightmare though ...
And now YOU. What would YOU like to see? We are thinking mainly hardwarewise. Would you like to see a cheaper RGB->VGA adapter? An extinct product ressurected? What? I'd really like to hear alot of opinions. This is mainly aimed at hardware, not software.
The Amiga was traditionally very strong on Video/TV production. It worked both on PAL and NTSC, and in several resolutions. The custom graphics chips could be synced from an external source, so it was very popular to use it with genlocks. The custom hardware made things very smooth and flicker free, without heavy CPU usage.
Both the BoXeR and the
Commodore One uses/would use FPGA's to accomplish solutions very similar to the Amiga custom chips, with coppers, blitters, hardware sprites, etc (of course, the C-1 also has to take the C64 in account).
Both the Pegasos and the A1 hardware goes the mainstream PC/Mac way, with all standard components. That is great for a cost/price POV, but it does not make the hardware stand out.
I would like to see a new "Amiga" custom chipset. It could be made with FPGA's, fast and easy (ehrm, sort of at least). The features of the
Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA's looks kind of interesting IMO, as an option they can even include PPC CPU cores on the chip (up to four of them).
Forget about advanced 3D, there is no way (and no reason) to compete with the 3D chips developers. This is about powerful 2D with consumer TV's and video production in mind, with improved custom chips features. Perhaps some basic 3D functionality that can be used for 2D planes manipulation (for zooming, twisting, rotating, picture in picture, etc). It should be flexible and powerful in screen resolutions and modes (all VGA/SVGA resolutions/modes included, all TV modes, and it should go as far as HDTV), it should use 32 bit graphic (alpha channel in hardware), it should offer multiple displays, it should have a blitter, a copper, "windowing mode" (smooth HW scrolling of a small view of a much bigger screen), etc. It should offer HW antialiasing. It should offer at least one video in channel, with built in genlocking functionality.
As a start you could produce a graphic card with this chipset (or with sound too, a "media" card) in PCI/AGP. This could be used outside the Amiga world too, in PC's and Mac's for video editing/broadcast solutions. It should offer high quality video output, multiple displays, lots of connector options (including component video connectors). If the chipset has a built in CPU (like the virtex), it could run an OS internally (AROS with custom low level, hardware banging drivers in asm?) which handles everything internally "the Amiga way", independent of the OS on the main board.
This chipset could also be used in STB's and other consumer electronics/home entertainment products.
A new "Amiga" motherboard with a new custom chipset would be great too. It should be PPC of course, and it would also have PCI/AGP for expansions (and 3D cards for the ones who wants one of these).
But I'm just dreaming away here! :-D
It will be interesting to see what (if anything) may come out of your plans.
