Would you support this project? -please read-

[sir_inferno]

that's true, a good project, with all the right components, usb good graphics etc, but based on the wrong thing IMO

>When I buy a Amiga, I want to buy a real Amiga, and not a PPC motherboard with a PC modified case wich a
>reseller puts tougether for you. Thats not an Amiga and I know that there is lots of people wich agree with me. But
>its TABU to say something else today, than going the cheapest way.

What's wrong with being less expensive? I hated paying $550 for my PicassoIV, equivalent to a $50 PCI card with same gfx chip/memory at the time...

Also, please explain how custom and thus more expensive hardware can make the software user experience so different and so very much better that what AmigaOne/Pegasos/Amithlon do now. Where do Radeon, Audigy2, etc. fail so miserably that you do not want them at all? Specifically what things do you want to improve on that will be so much better than those PC chips? What specifications will be so much better that ATI/Creative Labs/etc. are not already working on for their future products?

>plus ATI are very 3rd party friendly and open with their documentation.

Haa haa, aaah aaah aaah, haa haa, ohhh, he he, uh, cough, cough, ahem. Sorry.

>I will offcourse support AmigaOne, but its not the "real thing". It misses something... and Amiga Inc' dosent have
>any Amiga spirit left.

I've read through this thread, seen various people agree or disagree with you, but still no one has yet said WHAT is missing. Please, this one single detail seems very far out of my reach.

>There is no advertising, the OS release is just never going to happend, and if it happends, only Amiga
>people will know of it.

Same for Pegasos, Oliver's Coldfire board, Boxer, AGA, AAA, Zorro, and probably same for your board too. Do you really intend to market this thing to the masses in PC land?

[Waccoon]

I'm still reading this because it's fun to harass idealists.  :-D

The main reason for this project, is to get the Amiga feeling back. Maybe even Eyetech is interested in the end.

I think the only Amiga "feel" was because of how people programmed it.  You put a disk in, and the program took over.  That's unlike a lot of PC's these days, but not really unlike any game console.  The only thing that could get that "feel" back is to be able to run software without installing it.  Only game developers would really go for that.  (Hmm... games... didn't the Amiga have something to do with that?)

Ah, but Kickstart early options, Guru Meditation, Workbench... these are the things that made the Amiga special.

Oh, and why ColdFire?  Does that CPU magically offer more Amiga "feel" than any other processor?

I see a splitted community as I've got lots of mails supporting me, and here and also people wich dosent believe in such project and talks about dreaming. Yes, it is a dream, and it is a big dream for most of Amigans, to get the thing we all had before back.

Well, it's good to have a solid goal, but theorizing alone doesn't get you anywhere.  Why do you think Apple gave up on their own core OS and adopted BSD Unix?

PS2 is a good example on how Amiga could envolve yes.

Do you know how much money it cost to develop the PS2 chips?  Are you aware that console manufacturers lose money on hardware and require licensing fees on each game to stay in business?  Did you know the core of the Emotion Engine is an embedded MIPS chip?  Did you know the PS2 divides GFX processing between two different chips, which is one of the reasons it's difficult to program?

Come up with ideas and I write them down,.. I also understand those wich thinks this idea is totally waste of time.

My advice is to focus less on the hardware and more on the form factor, and the software interface.

A 3D-AGA chip like in PS2 in the new Amiga would boost it. It would give programers time and resources they never get anywhere else. I mean,.. all this new AGP gfx cards allways comes in new shapes. They give programers new standards and this results in more bugs in programs.

You'd have to have a good set of development tools to go with it.  One of the big reasons Direct3D and OpenGL caught on wasn't to boost performance or make software work with all video cards.  These kinds of APIs make programming easier, so programmers don't HAVE to do everything themselves.  It's like comparing assembly to C.  Assembly is faster and more reliable, but why go through all that trouble?  The 3DFX Glide and S3 MeTaL API's didn't catch on because they were too hardware specific (Glide was, however, a stipped-down OpenGL, I've heard).

Abstraction and metadata is really making software bloat these days.  If you just program intelligently, compatibility and performance falls into place without using highly proprietary hardware.

I dont say that a GeForce 4 TI 4200 card is bad or something, is just that programers should have the hardware to program for, and be good/better.

You *CAN* hard-code a GeForce 4 if you want to.  If you think it's possible to make a new GFX architecture that puts nVidia to shame, and throw away programming tools to get that extra "edge"...  feel free to try.  :-)

I'll give this going to Monday 09.00cet. Then starts working on this project for real. Getting companies interested. It wont be a easy task/job, but I love my Amiga 4000 and I would love to see a new Amiga. I will offcourse support AmigaOne, but its not the "real thing". It misses something... and Amiga Inc' dosent have any Amiga spirit left.

I don't think anyone has ever defined the "spirit" of Amiga, and I don't think anyone ever will.

Instead, why not define, in detail, EXACTLY what disappoints you about each PC component that's already off-the-shelf?  Like, what is it about the memory management capabilities of the GeForce 4 you don't like?  Why do you like the PS2 Graphics Synthesizer, instead?

There is no advertising, the OS release is just never going to happend, and if it happends, only Amiga people will know of it.

No OS?  Who will make software for it?  If you make hardware without a specific software in mind, chances are it will just end up being a Linux box.  :-)

Its better to try, than just do nothing at all!

Good for you.  Start trying by writing an essay on what's wrong with the industry, how you intend to fix each problem, and try to collect as much talent as you can.  Politics and human nature tend to be much more difficult problems to resolve than technical issues.

OK, I realize my comments here have sounded very critical, and for that I appologize. I do applaud the fact that you have a dream, but there are realities that doesn't sound like you have seriously considered. It sounds like something that the market cannot bear financially. You want us to start thinking about a true new Amiga today, but it will take a couple years to complete this thing - you have to design and then test and then bugfix and then test and then produce the chips. You have to then design and test and bugfix and then test and then product the board. You have to then get the software working on it all. Considering you feel PCI/AGP to be important, what is your reason for this? Surely PCI/AGP cards will be advanced and marketed faster than your chispet, and thus soon be a suitable replacement, like Voodoo3 now replaces ECS Denise on my A3000?

I'd just like to see the people wanting custom chips to think about WHY they want that, and exactly what it is about standard PCI/AGP products already available and already in the upgrade phase at rich specialist companies that fails to deliver for you. What exactly is this special Amiga feeling that AmigaOne or Pegasos lack, why exactly do they lack it, and what exactly do you think needs changed to get that feeling back? How does the AmigaOS experience fail to be the AmigaOS experience? How does the look and feel of the software interface look and feel different on an AmigaOne than an A4000T? What exactly is wrong with the AmigaOne/AmigaOS4 product? What exactly is wrong with the Pegasos/Morphos product? What do you intend to do to make AmigaOS work "right" to you or me as a user on your board that it cannot do on AmigaOne or that Morphos cannot do on Pegasos? How will this be more "right" than how AmigaOS looks and feels on a bog-standard PC running Amithlon, and what exactly it is about Amithlon on a PC looks and feels "wrong" to you or me as a user?

I think there are a few important questions in that pile of mush for your project. I hope you think about these topics and can come up with good, specific answers. If you can, then perhaps your special chipset has a true purpose. If you cannot narrow things doen to very concise, specific reasons "why" things would be so different to me as an end user, or my grandmother, or your grandmother, as an end user comparing your product to the AmigaOne, Pegasos, or Amithlon options, then perhaps there is a chance that these other options aren't really so grossly and negligently lacking in something as you seem to think.

Do you know how much a mask set costs for a single chip to be fabbed? Or how long it takes for a blank wafer to have testable chips etched onto it? Or how many respins are realistic to get your design working properly in silicon, costing you new masks to fix problems? There's other important things you need to find out before you assume there will be customers to pay for everything. If it still all adds up in your mind, then I'd love to see how things turn out for you and your product. I just fear you have not yet looked into development times, realistic financial requirements, realistic selling prices, and what your market will look like when you are ready to sell the finished product.

[iamaboringperson]

92 key keyboard? Which 2-4 keys are you planning to drop?

:-P

[Plaz]

1. Getting financial support from Motorola

That's the kind of talk I like, support from Moto
for PPC and, custom cases (but better than the old ones).
You might  want to add the next obvious player in
the PPC game to the contact list... IBM
IBM is all over linux as the next best thing. If you
convience them that amiga is the perfect desktop
companion to linux severs, then we are back in business!

PlaZ

[asian1]

Hello
Perhaps in the future, if fast, cheap "reconfigurable computer" using  FPGA or other technology is available, such project may be possible.

The RC CPU can emulate X86, PowerPC, 68K or other CPU. Perhaps it will use WISC / Writable Instruction Set Computing.

The major players are Altera, Xilinx, Starbridges.

[AmiDelf]

The first goal for this project, is set. The AGA replacement is choosen. Now its up to the company to wanting creating such set-up. Yes, thats right. Sony. Getting in contact with them will be hard, but with some help, this can be done. Remember, this is a project. And it can fail, but for me. I want it to work out.

The new Amiga, will be based oppon Emotion Engine. It wont be a easy task. This is just the hardware part and partners needs to be talked too and more. Including this, AmigaOS would be rewritten a bit to handle Emotion Engine.

More updates for this project will come later.

Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org

[bloodline]

AmiDelf wrote:
The first goal for this project, is set. The AGA replacement is choosen. Now its up to the company to wanting creating such set-up. Yes, thats right. Sony. Getting in contact with them will be hard, but with some help, this can be done. Remember, this is a project. And it can fail, but for me. I want it to work out.

The new Amiga, will be based oppon Emotion Engine. It wont be a easy task. This is just the hardware part and partners needs to be talked too and more. Including this, AmigaOS would be rewritten a bit to handle Emotion Engine.

More updates for this project will come later.

Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org

Hang on? The Emotion Engine, that's the PS2's CPU, I thought you had chosen the Coldfire (A CPU much better suited to the Nuron project than your project). I think you mean the Graphics Synthesizer.

With all due respect what use is the Graphics Synthesizer without the "Emotion Engine", They need each other to work.

Anyway, The PS2 is no more powerful, in fact less so than my TNT2 in my old Athlon 600 Box.  A cheap Bottom spec Duron with Mobo and a Geforce two can all be picked up as a package for around £100 now... You cannot compete with that!

[PMC]

"The main reason for this project, is to get the Amiga feeling back."

As massive a step forward as Pegasos/AOne both are, they do lack the distinct 'Amiganess' with which we all identify.  It's more than having an Amiga-like OS, it's down to the machine's character.  Somehow an ATX mobo with PPC and BIOS doesn't hit the spot for me personally, but they deserve success all the same.

"I see a splitted community as I've got lots of mails supporting me, and here and also people wich dosent believe in such project and talks about dreaming. Yes, it is a dream, and it is a big dream for most of Amigans, to get the thing we all had before back."

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea.  However, I see the realities being insurmountable.  In an ideal world of course we'd all have our dream machine that kicks ass and happens to have a Boing Ball logo on it somewhere...  :-D

"PS2 is a good example on how Amiga could envolve yes. "

Agreed.  

"Come up with ideas and I write them down,.. I also understand those wich thinks this idea is totally waste of time. "

There's nothing wrong with dreaming, but everyone has their own point of view.  What surprised me is how many realists there are out there who continue to support this platform.

"There is Amigans out there with knowledge of this things. Oliver, ApexSoftware, ELBOX, ++ "

Designing add on hardware is a whole different anvenue to designing a complete system and bespoke OS to go with it.  

"A 3D-AGA chip like in PS2 in the new Amiga would boost it. .. all this new AGP gfx cards allways comes in new shapes. They give programers new standards and this results in more bugs in programs. "

A PS2 style graphics chipset would be nice.  However why not stick with someone like ATI to ensure some legacy compatability?  

"I'll give this going to Monday 09.00cet. Then starts working on this project for real. Getting companies interested. It wont be a easy task/job, but I love my Amiga 4000 and I would love to see a new Amiga. I will offcourse support AmigaOne, but its not the "real thing". It misses something... and Amiga Inc' dosent have any Amiga spirit left."

This is the sort of thing we need here, so I say good luck to you with all sincerety.  :-)

[JoannaK]

Amidelf: At this point your stuff sounds way too much like daydreaming.. People like me need a lot more tanglible projects before it's considered real and worth of support.


For quick comparision..  See http://www.iti.fi/iti5200.php
It's not a new Amiga nor has it never been intented to be one, but it is real existing hardware and it's having specs quite comparable to your dreams.

This demonstration/development board is about 10*10cm (4*4inch) is now available for evaluations and I belive it could be quite nice basis for portable/low-end Amigalike machine, *if* any of OS makers would be interested on making a port. Final board design could well be smaller, or contain some usefull additions. For example: this CPU has direct IDE/ATA interface in it.. it was not necessary on our design, but for making small (inexpesive) desktop system it would be quite usefull feature, also it's Ram controller has DDR-mode, at this board it's used on SDR...

[whabang]

So what we really want is a BIOS-less A1 with a PS2 chipset, a PPC-CPU, pun into a CD32-like case, bundled with a wireless Amiga keyboard and mouse. Right?

[takemehomegrandma]

@ AmiDelf

I wrote this in another thread:

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.

As I said, I was just dreaming away (like you are), but you could check that thread out. There were some interesting responses and comments made there. :-)

[lempkee]

imaboringperson:i dont know when u used an real amiga last but , i am pretty sure amiga is "92" .. but then again i belive u where just messing :=)

anyway


amidelf:good luck with sony , best chance u have is to step into their office in oslo or use any of the big developer teams in norway to reach them (Hp/Dell etc) and this i say because i had to do the same some time ago , there is an "question form on the sony website , diffrent to which sections you use" or was anyway.

anyway if i had 3 billion ukp in my account i might have tried this, but first of all i would have decided everything and made sure it was waterproof! (ie no mishapps or changes as you go (which killed COMMODORE and many more)