natami

[smerf]

After years and years of teases,updates, changes, still no release date. I don't think it will ever happen. I was interested in this, until I realized I could simply remove windows shell and boot straight to os3.x with winuae.

That 3ghz pc cost me 30$ on ebay. And its here right now.

WOW!!!

A very close competitor to the words of wisdom for today, but $30 on ebay makes you a loser. Buying old obsolete computers, put you behind in the runnings to Olaf.

Sorry
smerf

[smerf]

Do you have any imagination whatsoever when it comes to computers? :flak:

Hi,

@Kesa,

Imagination from a computers stand point is illogical.

If it looks archaic, acts archaic, and runs arcahic then it must be archaic.

Natami, does not compute

smerf

[smerf]

I agree WinUAE is just an application, an incredible one, but not a physical product like Natami or Minimig so comparison is unfair.

There is nothing wrong with Natami except the price IMO. However you would need to invest something like $1,000,000 to do an FPGA Amiga from scratch to full mass production run as a product to get it well below the magic $100 price barrier. However would you quickly sell 50,000-100,000 units even then to recoup your initial investment from your first batch?

Maybe you might sell more if the machine could connect to something like Apple App store/XBLA/PSN Network style service to buy legally authorised copies of games to use on said machine for a similar price to MP3s on iTunes?

Cost of investment vs potential maximum sales is the issue.

HMMM!!!

Lets see, winuae running on a new Intel, with a new GPU graphics card, with sound chips that are the leading edge that can be used in recording studios are not physical enough, OK whatever you say, I really enjoy playing Megaball on winuae on my 2 year old 6 core computer, with a 6770 graphics card.

Some people just cannot accept the fact that old is old until they get old and cannot do a darn thing about it.

smerf

[runequester]

I think old people are ****, and should be shipped to some island.

[smerf]

I guess I had inferred that from your statement that Natami is a "waste of time" because it seemed like the obvious course of argument for why something that's a hobby project to scratch the itch of a handful of individuals in a hobbyist community is totally stupid and unjustified in existing, but if I was mistaken, please feel free to enlighten me on what your actual reasoning was.

Hi,

Cloanto's Amiga Forever, very cheap to buy, runs like an Amiga on Steroids, and hardware is very cheap to find.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

Besides it has lots of storage options.

Doesn't care if it is Pal or NTSC, 68000 or 68060, it just examines program, finds best emulation for running it and loads it up, simple for simple minded people like me.

and to top it off,

plays CD32 games, all on the same machine.

DUH!!!

smerf

[smerf]

Offcourse they are just emulators, as they only mimik (emulate) the chips behaviour as seen from the outside. They might get closer to the orginal then UAE, but thats only due to the efford involved not to the method used.

A real reimplementation would be opening the chips and transfering them to the FPGA gate by gate.

A Minimig might have more emotinal value for you, but the underlying principle is still the same as with UAE.

HI,

Sorry OlafS3,

but you are now in 2nd place for words of wisdom for today.

Kronos, has just taken first place for the most sane person on Amiga.org.

smerf

[smerf]

I think old people are ****, and should be shipped to some island.

LOL!!!


smerf

[smerf]

No one told me Natami is an emulator. I thought it was real. Good thing I have an A1200 then. Paying a fortune for an emulator my seem a put off for me.

Hi,

Natami, is a very good replacement for old silicon that will eventually wear out and quit working after, in the case of the Amiga hardware, a hundred and fifty years (if you keep the batteries changed).

smerf

[AmigaClassicRule]

Hi,

Natami, is a very good replacement for old silicon that will eventually wear out and quit working after, in the case of the Amiga hardware, a hundred and fifty years (if you keep the batteries changed).

smerf

Only I will not live for a 150 years. When the time comes and I know i am reaching a stage where I am too old but not too old enough to enjoy my money I will sell the A1200. When I am dead someone else is going to take over the hardware.

[minator]

Hi Mike. First, I am not an official spokesman for the Apollo project. Gunnar has talked about releasing the Apollo core source to specific customers under a strict license (and for a hefty fee).

Does the Apollo project have licenses for all the patents it's going to be using?

Building an open source CPU is one thing, selling it is something else altogether.  If they make any money they can expect to be contacted by lawyers demanding money.

OTOH this is probably the least of their worries...

The Apollo core will have some go fast features that will take a lot of work to duplicate like pipelining, Superscaler, instruction combining, new powerful instructions and addressing modes, sophisticated instruction and data caches (including snooping), loop optimizations, branch cache and prediction, etc.

It usually takes big teams of experienced engineers years to build something like this.  I don't ever like to say never but I'm going to break that tradition by saying I predict the Apollo project will never finish a design of this complexity.


Even if they could do it - what possible reason is there for anyone to pay for it?
This thing is going to require a big, hot and expensive FPGA.  All so you run stuff slower than a $1 ARM.

It's interesting as a technical project I'm sure, but the rest strikes me as wishful thinking.

[minator]

No one told me Natami is an emulator. I thought it was real. Good thing I have an A1200 then. Paying a fortune for an emulator my seem a put off for me.

It's not an emulator in any normal sense of that word.

A traditional emulator runs 68K code by converting it into e.g. x86 code and running it on the CPU.  The hardware doesn't exist so it also has to be recreated as software and executed on the CPU.  The conversion takes time as you'd imagine so emulators that work like this tend to be slow.

In the case of Natami (or Minimig or FPGA arcade) the original 68K and custom chips have been recreated as a "description".  This description configures the FPGA to act as the 68K and custom chips.  When you run you amiga app the FPGA hardware is doing the same job as the Amiga hardware.  The FPGA executes the 68K instructions - there is no software conversion involved.

[kedawa]

As long as it's done by the time I retire, I'll be happy.

[vxm]

@vxm
3DCore was shelved some time ago, there's a design, Gunnar even has an existing CPLD/FPGA version he did some time ago that could be used - but it's not the focus for Natami.

SAGA - I'm not personally sure, but the OCS/ECS/AGA implementation was looking good and already a lot faster in some ways than the original thanks to memory access, faster bus etc. It just needs a lot of tweaking. There's also the lesser discussed audio improvements but again I can't tell.

What is real is that there are several revision of the Natami boards with a real 68060 out there in peoples hands. 7 at the last count, who were trying to implement drivers for the network, usb, etc components. All essential stuff that needs doing to make it live upto it's promises.

Everyone, especially here sadly, goes on about the FPGA core and how the rest of the team is useless or unhelpful etc, but those things won't write themselves and the volunteers doing things are doing the best with what access they're given.

Andy

This is a structured project, which must be done with logic. Support new capabilities requires writing drivers. It is better to have a fully functional computer.

 Thank you for the answer.

[koaftder]

I guess I had inferred that

Wouldn't be the first time you assumed a bunch off garbage and started foaming at the mouth.

[commodorejohn]

Really hate to disappoint, but you can give your child a C64 or Amiga to show them what a good computer really is, but in true life, you are better off giving them a PC no matter how hard it hurts, it is the computer used by business's today and that is all there is to it.

Who gives a good ******* about preparing children for the business world? The chief joy of childhood is not having to worry about all that crap. Or do you think the purpose of toys is to prepare for work?

Cloanto's Amiga Forever, very cheap to buy, runs like an Amiga on Steroids, and hardware is very cheap to find.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

Well that's lovely for you then. But the existence of an alternative solution to a different (if related) problem does not somehow invalidate the desire for a new Amiga in hardware.

[commodorejohn]

Wouldn't be the first time you assumed a bunch off garbage and started foaming at the mouth.

That's very nice. Would you care to enlighten me on what your line of thinking actually was? I'm all ears.