Would you support this project? -please read-

[AmiDelf]

A new custom based Amiga. I know it sounds crazy, but I think people love Amiga as it is with custom chips. Sure AmigaONE is a nice goal, but lots of people have waited loong time for the next "real" Amiga.

I am webmaster of amigaworld.org and would love to get a custom based Amiga back on the track.

How about, Amiga 5500, Amiga 6000, Amiga 6200 and further. Based on ColdFire cpu

New Amiga could be like this:

Amiga 6000 for example:
AAA+ custom chips
3D customable chip
ColdFireV4 220MHz
Kickstart 4.0
USB 2.0 as standard
PCI
AGP
SD-RAM
New 92 keys Amiga keyboard

Would you like to get into such thing like this? I would be so glad, and lots of other Amigans too.

Would someone of you help out financing such project and is there any interest at all?

I know lots of people wich have been waiting for the next "real Amiga". And not everyone agrees on AmigaOne or Pegasos II++ Some of you wants a new custom based Amiga. Its something else to have a new Amiga computer, than a PC motherboad with PPC on it.

Please answere with respect and give the will and write your thoughts and dont think cheap ways. AmigaONE, Pegasos II++ is all cheap. People have forgotten how nice custom based computers was. We all waited for over 5 years. But nothing!

Now its the time to think new. People starts to think how borring Windows is, how borring PC is. People is jumping over to Mac because of their difference.

Regards,
Michal,

www.amigaworld.org

[downix]

@AmiDelf

I, for one, would love such a project.  In fact, I've been designing my own custom chipset for several years, but it's a hobby project more for my own self satisfaction than anything.  It also is not compatible with the Amiga's chipset, a lot of the elements from the Amiga's design are undesirable in a modern system.

[redrumloa]

AAA+ custom chips

I hope you are very wealthy. :-(

[Wolfe]

I would not invest money in such a project as there has been to many vaporware events.  However, if someone came up with a replacement mobo for the A1200 - ie coldfire with onboard GraphX, sound etc. . . I would buy one if it has bang for the buck.   :-D

[Wain]

I don't see how your machine is any different from an AmigaOne or Pegasos.  They all have AGP and PCI, and USB, and SDRAM.  The one exception is that their processors are about 1,000 times faster than the coldfire you've suggested.

Assuming you're implying an integrated graphics and audio chipset(where you've listed AAA+ custom chips, I assume you are well aware that AAA+ was never finished, and would be horribly out of date by todays standards), who out there is going to be able to compete with Nvidia, ATI, and Creative Labs for top of the line graphics and sound?

PC's ARE broken up into seperate cntrollers these days too!  You have a completely seperate graphics controller, and a completely seperate audio controller, and a completely seperate bus controller, and a completely seperate memory controller (usually done as a northbridge and southbridge).

Operating systems are what determine the feel of modern computers.  When people don't like Windows, they move to Mac, or Linux, or something else, but a Mac isn't really all that different from a PC these days when it comes to hardware, sure it's a closed platform so there's less variety, but the OS is what makes people move to it.

Amiga will have to do the same.  If it can't compete as an OS, then there's no point, but a "custom based" machine is only going to provide a piece of hardware that will take another five years to come out due to all of the design work involved, and it will be overpriced and underpowered compared to current machines.

Also, there's absolutely no point in making a new "Amiga" keyboard if it's going to support USB.   You might as well just buy an OEM USB keyboard, and have some different keycaps put on it for the Amiga keys.

The truth is, there's not really any difference between what you've described, and an AmigaOne with onboard video and audio, except yours has a much slower processor, would cost an extraordinarily large amount of money and time to develop, and wouldn't be able to compete with whatever modern graphics and audio cards were currently available when it debuted.


EDIT - Added...

What we would really need, is a whole new idea or paradigm for the hardware to work with.  Something radical and different.  The Amiga custom chipsets are not radical and different by todays standards.  They are EXTREMELY efficient at what they do, but they are incredibly old news.  The reason Amiga worked so well was because of it's very different (at the time) design.

If there is to be a new machine that grabs people like the Amiga did, it will once again have to have a new design concept, and not be part of this "Let's up the speed and throughput club."



Hardware isn't that important these days (as every Amigan should know), it's how that hardware is handled.

[Damion]

Hi AmiDelf,

Amiga 6000 for example:
AAA+ custom chips
3D customable chip
ColdFireV4 220MHz
Kickstart 4.0
USB 2.0 as standard
PCI
AGP
SD-RAM
New 92 keys Amiga keyboard

Please answere with respect and give the will and write your thoughts and
dont think cheap ways. AmigaONE, Pegasos II++ is all cheap. People have
forgotten how nice custom based computers was. We all waited for over 5
years. But nothing!

I can't speak for the AmigaONE (having not ever examined the board in person),
but the construction quality of the Pegasos is not something I would associate
with "cheap", it's certainly far beyond anything I ever bought from Commodore.
If you mean cheap in the sense of "off the shelf", I don't think it's necessary
(or finacially prudent) to continually "re-invent the wheel"...especially when
ATI - for example - will still do it better..

People have forgotten how nice custom based computers was. We all waited for over 5
years. But nothing!

Well, I agree to an extent...it was nice back in '89, when the Amiga's specs were
still (somewhat) on paar with other platforms...it was definately a capable
machine, no doubts. But a custom design that also happens to have *inferior* specs
from the rest of the market may be a hard sell in 2004 (as in '94). And speaking
of, who would you sell it to? You need a large customer/developer base in order to
sustain ANY platform...who will design the chips? who will make them? who will write
the OS? And the cost of designing and producing the type of system that you're proposing
is going to far exceed the amount most will be willing to pay..

Personally...I like being able to choose exactly what hardware to buy or not, I love
the Cooler Master and Radeon I just bought!!

From an "enthusiasts" perspective, I would much rather continue to just toy
around with my old Amigas from time to time if I feel the need...and save the
Pegasos for a "reasonably" up-to-date hobby/fun system.

But if you're REALLY going to follow through with something like his...I wish
you good luck...and at least consider some better specs. The Coldfire and SD-RAM
would make it an automatic "strike" on my field.

[Lo]

@AmiDelf

  Whatcha' been smokin'??

[Tomas]

Only if it was 100% a500/a600 compitable.. I need a classic amiga for classic games, demos and such..

[Matt_H]

Keyboards - Yes!
The rest, no. If it's a classic upgrade you want, it would probably make more sense to pool resources with the Coldfire project. Or to upgrade buster to improve transfer speeds - a few people have theorized this is possible.

[MarkTime]

I would not support such a project.

However I would support renaming the AmigaONE, Amiga 5000, if that helps.

[Cyberus]

:lol:

[redfox]

@AmiDelf

I'm not knocking your suggestion in any way ...  :-)

Personally, I would rather see something a bit more like the following:

G3/G4/G5 PPC processor
1 GB RAM
on-board bootable flash drive with AmigaOS (or equivalent)
on-board Radeon graphics system
on-board sound system
on-board 10/100 ethernet LAN interface (NIC)
on-board 802.11b wireless networking interface
on-board USB 2.0 as standard

If such a board was small enough, it could be packaged as a tablet-style computer with detached full-sized keyboard and mouse, or as a laptop or as a small footprint system box with keyboard and mouse.

Of course, such a system would not be upgradable unless there was some sort of expansion slot ... but it would be a fun machine for awhile.

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

[Hammer]

A new custom based Amiga. I know it sounds crazy, but I think people love Amiga as it is with custom chips.

There’s nothing special about Amiga’s custom chip when you have various modern PCs that are equipped with VPU/GPU/APU/SPP/DSP/IGP supporting processors.

PS; 'Crappy' PCs are equipped with less supporting processors.

PC BIOS and OS abstraction layers has basically shielded it’s users from different PC hardware designs that is available in the mainstream market.

Its something else to have a new Amiga computer, than a PC motherboard with PPC on it.

Does Marvell’s NB supports X86 processors?    

Note that you mentioned some mainstream PC based technologies i.e.
USB 2.0, PCI, AGP, SD-RAM

Compare your specs to AmigaOne (plus add-ons)
-------------------------------
AAA+ custom chips
3D customable chip
ColdFireV4 220MHz
Kickstart 4.0
USB 2.0 as standard
PCI
AGP
SD-RAM
-------------------------------
MAI logic’s Articia S.
ATI Radeon 9100 VPU (with programmable shaders).
PowerPC G4 1Ghz
UBoot BIOS
USB 1.1
AGP
SD-RAM
-------------------------------

One could write tons of paper on the differences between nForce2 vs i865/875 vs VIA KT600 and 'etc', but its the PC’s abstracting layers makes them 'feel' similar.

To illustrate my point,

1.  AMD K7 Athlon’s bus is based on a non-X86 DEC’s Alpha EV6 bus architecture yet it 'feels' similar to Intel's offerings.
2. Intel Pentium IV’s RAMBUS architecture is based from yet earlier designs from SGI's RAMBUS architecture, yet it 'feels' like similar to AMD's offerings.

Both X86 vendors has assimilated key technologies that once powered the mighty performance machines of the early 1990s ('Cut & Paste ' engineering is X86’s best friend) …

It's just too bad that Motorola didn't "Athlon'ed" the 68K with post-RISC core (high performance RISC core with HW emulator/translator) and assimilated some early 90s high performance bus designs.

Can Amiga’s AAA architecture compete with technologies that were used to power the yesterday’s expensive RISC machines? (Remember Amiga Computing’s article on post-AAA Amiga machines i.e. pointed to RISC machine future?)  

[Dalamar]

MarkTime wrote:
I would not support such a project.

However I would support renaming the AmigaONE, Amiga 5000, if that helps.

 :-D   I like it.

[angrybrit]

Frankly, I'd like to have a new line of Amiga style cases developed instead of a new motherboard.

I'm getting an AmigaOne Lite (when they come out) and I don't like ANY of the case I've seen.  They are awful (like 99% of all Windows PC cases) compared to what Commodore gave us.

Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX formats.  And it we be cool if we could stack'em.  So that I could plug a small Linksys KVM between the Pegasus and an AmigaOne.  The Amiga 3000 could be a starting point for some ideas.  It's the prettiest case of all Amiga computers.