What Amiga product do *YOU* would want. Please read.

[Belial6]

Well, IMHO, it's both ingenious and crazed. But, if you take the idea one step further, I say it was already attempted. The best project of post 2000 Amiga community, and it was killed by greed and politics.

Here's the thing... You've essentially got a low-powered computer (Original Amiga) acting as a front end for a slave high-powered processing machine (the PC) The interface would probably cause a bit of a bottleneck. Plus, essentially, you'd just be using the classic Amiga as a front-end.

You've already got a high powered PC sitting there. Why don't you just virtualize the Amiga front end on it? It wouldn't cause much of a performance hit. Then you can run with totally off-the-shelf hardware.

I present you with Amithlon. Our dreams crushed.

Didn't Amithlon die due to licencing problems?  I thought it was the Amiga emulation itself that killed Amithlon.  If that is true, making a bus to bus adaptor and a couple of drivers dodges the entire IP problem.  There are no patents to be in dispute.

[Jose]

In the last interview with Dave Haynie he mentioned the guy that still has the design for the AmiJoe. Maybe he/you coluld finish it (with improvements to the bus speed maybe). That could be a good start for a more uptodate PPC for the A1200. That's what I'd want too!  And like someone said, a Megarray connector in it would be very cold for upgrading options.
I seem to remember that the major obstacle of Metabox (or was it Escena?) to releasing the AmiJoe was the Northbridge, or something like that. But nowdays there are northbridges available ...
Maybe different models, some like the CyberstormPPC wich is a computer in itself, but with a processor slot and bus for upgrading, the A1200 motherboard would be there for the legacy stuff.  Other models with just a simple PPC in a socked or megarray connector. Other chepers ones with the processor soldered. I guess the best to do is the do a market study to see what people would buy.

OTHER THINGS:
- Mike Tinker had an AGA replecement chipset in the works wich would be used in CURRENT AGA Amiga models. Could he finish it? I think the thing included Firewire, and AGA true color modes, while stll being compatible with AGA (I guess there's not much point with RTG anyway.)
- Some sort of chip or whatever that would allow draggable screens with RTG and more modern PCI gfx cards. I think that would have a market but don't know if it's possible at all
- To make the AKIKO chip available to the A1200. There was even a prototype with that in a CD ROM addon by commodore. Check it out HERE and HERE

- Well, an internal A1200 PCI expansion for the desktop if one took of the drive.  That would be crazy.

- A mini DVDR/W writter for the A1200 instead of the floppy. There were actually CD roms that had a slot and you put the CD in it. Maybe there are mini DVDR/Ws that have the same mechanism.

- A flicker fixer /scan doubler that works at 100hz, and that works in all AGA modes
- All of the above at the same time!!  :-D  8-)

[redrumloa]

In the last interview with Dave Haynie he mentioned the guy that still has the design for the AmiJoe.

Now i wonder who could have possibly asked THAT question? ;-)

[Jose]

"Now i wonder who could have possibly asked THAT question?  ;-) "

Cool!! It'd buy that right a way :-o  Don't give up!!
 If you need us to make some sort of compromise for some company to consider it, as long as there's no risk I think most of us wouldn't mind trusting you, since we know you from this site for a long time.

I would like to see companies entering this market not try stuff that's already been done before, and not wasting their time and money on "100 made" projects.

As for takemehomegrandma: the A1 and Pegasos *do* stand out! Name me another commercial PowerPC motherboard that is as reasonably priced as the Pegasos, and I will retract that.

Sure, so it allows you to buy an AGP card from Best Buy, hard disks from CompUSA, and memory from any PC supplier you like, and you're saying this kind of generic solution is *BAD*?

Amigans hankering for entirely custom solutions just want them for bragging rights. 64bit processor? To brag about. Totally new graphics card? To tell all your mates that it's better than their "Micro$oft Winblows PeeCee of Crap". I personally think that's sickening behaviour.

You can buy a Pegasos the same way as you buy a PC and get work done - who gives a crap if it's using the same parts, what you have is a machine that gets work done in the way you want it to.

Prerequisites are that you would really have to like MorphOS or Linux or OpenBSD to get that work done, but is THAT a bad solution? It gives people (and companies and governments..) a very good excuse to stop using Windows if they simply CANNOT use Windows

Let's not think about products that the people want, but products that mean more than running around shouting about how you have a *more* unique solution than everyone else. Like that counted for anything

=Neko=

[Munchkin]

Besides all the obvious addons I'd like to see for my A4k like PPC card, PCI bridge and such there is one thing I'd love to have:

A Zorro II add-on for the A500, with pass-through, so I can put my old A500 to some good use. One slot is enough, two is preferred. Want to be able to add at least a nic and a gfx-card to it.
The pass-through is important for the harddrive-controller.
That way I could have my 500 run as a webserver or something like that.

[redfox]

At the moment, my Amiga hardware needs are really quite modest ...

For my Amiga 2000HD ...
 - a hassle-free 68K accelerator card,
 - an ethernet interface,
 - an internal 880K floppy disk drive to replace my flaky one.

This should suffice until AmigaOS4 is ready for the AmigaOne.   ;-)

---------------
redfox

[jamesm]

IMO the only way to squeak out a profit in this market is to really have your ear to the ground, so to speak, to see what people actually want.

Be careful, very few customers really know what they want  :-)
And those that do dont want it at your price  :-)

[redrumloa]

As for takemehomegrandma: the A1 and Pegasos *do* stand out! Name me another commercial PowerPC motherboard that is as reasonably priced as the Pegasos, and I will retract that.

I didn't say they didn't! I am a Pegasos owner and think it is a fine piece of hardware , however at the moment we are not a reseller for either it nor the Teron/A1.

There will always be people using classic Amigas IMO.  Reasonably priced NEW hardware could sell, even if only in very small quantities.

[redrumloa]

Jose wrote:
Cool!! It'd buy that right a way :-o  Don't give up!!
 If you need us to make some sort of compromise for some company to consider it, as long as there's no risk I think most of us wouldn't mind trusting you, since we know you from this site for a long time.

 :-)
Don't get any false hope from my coment. There are no plans for a PPC board at the moment beyond a discussion. It would be foolish for me to suggest otherwise. If we ever do decide to persue such a product I guarantee we will announce it:-)

[PMC]

I'd love to see a Coldfire based accelerator card become available, or failing that I liked the idea of an x86 running 68040 emulation.  

I'd also like to see a better and more elegant solution for integrating native Amiga graphics modes and RTG.  I'm fed up with swapping cables and having to make room for two monitors on my desk.  

[bloodline]

PMC wrote:
I'd love to see a Coldfire based accelerator card become available, or failing that I liked the idea of an x86 running 68040 emulation.  

I'd also like to see a better and more elegant solution for integrating native Amiga graphics modes and RTG.  I'm fed up with swapping cables and having to make room for two monitors on my desk.  

If you are concidering an Acelerator for the classic line... I would urge you to be thinking Cheap x86 board (1.8Ghz Durons are something like $30 now!) with DDR ram. Then you could have a 68k emulator on a small flash rom.

One could run a x86 version of AROS on this board with an integrated 68k emu and it would then offer the same type of system as OS4 and MOS.

If you are thinking about Gfx/sound cards, then choosing a cheap VGA chip and AC97 chip and an AGA Emulation FPGA and then building an VGA/AGA hybrid card would be nice :-)

One where The FPGA emualtes the AGA functions and promotes them to the VGA chip (and the 16bit Audio chip), while allowing the Native features of the modern Gfx and audio as well. :-)

But at the end of the day, I think my Keyboard idea is still the best...

(Imagine one of these with a USB connector plugged into your PC/A1/PEG :-D )

How about also selling A4KT boxes (ATX compatible), and I mean propper Commdore ones (NOT the tacky Escom A4KT ones).

[Floid]

Vaguely feasible thoughts:

-PCMCIA USB for the AGA models?
(I'm one of those who thinks USB hits the sweet spot for expanding anything you *can't*/*don't want to* slap a PPC on, and is 'important' in terms of giving the old machines a new lease on life... but the market is indeed pretty saturated right now.  Anyone doing US importing of the Thylacine, I've lost track?)

-Everyone seems to like Coldfire.  If you go through the trouble and expense... go through the trouble and expense of giving the same PCB some standalone capacity.  Given physical limitations, I'm not sure if it'd be a good idea to try to wedge PCI onto such a beast,  but something that can 'Flipper' into a backplane would be worth shooting for, or if not that, just something with the usual onboard CF/USB/Ethernet interfaces useful for the embedded Linux/BSD/maybe_even_AROS games.

-Not exactly hardware, and I've already pitched this to Fleecy and others, but an affordable hardware/software 'kit' to turn an old 'miggy into a networkable VNC client might be a good idea with the launch of 4 and the Pegasos line.  Of course, this depends on having some VNC server action for the PowerPC "big boxes," but it'll keep people's classics out of landfill, and probably be reasonably popular.

There are probably some innovative (USB?) peripherals that could be used along with the above, depending how many cycles you can squeeze out of a 68000 or 020 already trying to handle IP and VNC... Along the lines of Griffin Tech's Mac lineup, but with more an eye to the 'networked home' business we were supposed to be shooting towards.

[Bodie_CI5]

I want the A4kt and keyboard that Bloodline has asked for. PPC would also be great as well as PCI stuff. Maybe even some of the custom chips. I will also try to think of some more.

[Bodie_CI5]

Oh, and I forgot. POWER SUPPLIES :-)

[lempkee]

Amiga keyboard +Mice is something we need badly , it should support ps/2 and USB aswell as Classic connectors and a slot in for the a1200 /a600 connector etc (so u wont need a keyboard adapter (which sometimes is a PAIN! when it comes to multi useage of keys (ie like CTRL+ALT+F10) .

and ofcourse a PPC board that has faster mem and with proper "SILENT" cooling.

make this and i will buy it even if it wont run out of the box with all software.

cheers