Questions for you (amiga-project)

[AmiDelf]

Only seriouse answeres will be taken. Please answere. Negative responces to this will be ignored.

1.
Should this project go for a normal ATX PPC motherboard with PowerVR gfx custom chips or its own motherboard?

2.
Should this new so-called Amiga, use AmigaOS v4 or MorphOS?

3.
Should this new Amiga have Zorro slots, or not?

4.
Would you like to see Amiga connectors for ZipStick compatibility and Amiga mouse comp.?

5.
What sort of Amiga keyboard connector is the best sollution? USB only support? PS/2 alike connector like on Amiga 4000? PS/2 connector?

6.
How should this Amiga keyboard be? 96 keys like before, or PC alike form?

7.
Should we go for PowerVR 2 or PowerVR 3 for the prototype?

8.
What sort of tower sollutions should we use? We want to continue Amiga 4000 T design and go further with this. Is this bad, or good?

9.
What price would you give for such Amiga?

10.
We've come up with Amiga 5200, Amiga 5600 and even Amiga 6000. What should the name be of this new Amiga?

11.
Is Amiga NeXT a bad or good name for this project?

12.
Any comment? What sort of companies would be interested in this project? How about Dreamcast game compatibility? The option to use DC controllers for this "new" entertaining Amiga?



We hope to get good answers. All negative sugestions against this project, will be ignored. We want to know what you want. We want to know how this project should go on.

I think that this is the first time ever, when a community tougether makes a new Amiga. I know that AmigaOne and PegasosII will be good alternatives. But this project aim is to give Amigans what they allways wanted. The NeXT Amiga!

Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org

[that_punk_guy]

I'll just answer the ones I have something vaguely useful to say for:

2. Should this new so-called Amiga, use AmigaOS v4 or MorphOS?
AROS!

4. Would you like to see Amiga connectors for ZipStick compatibility and Amiga mouse comp.?
Yes.

5. What sort of Amiga keyboard connector is the best sollution? USB only support? PS/2 alike connector like on Amiga 4000? PS/2 connector?
The more the merrier.

6. How should this Amiga keyboard be? 92 keys like before, or PC alike form?
Unless you're manufacturing keyboards too, I shouldn't have thought you need to worry about that...

8. What sort of tower sollutions should we use? We want to continue Amiga 4000 T design and go further with this. Is this bad, or good?
I'd say start fresh.

11.
Is Amiga NeXT a bad or good name for this project?
Very bad. Steve Jobs would sue your ass.

[restore2003]

1.
Should this project go for a normal ATX PPC motherboard with PowerVR gfx custom chips or its own motherboard?

Normal ATX PPC (to make some competition against AmigaOne to drive down prices :-)

2.
Should this new so-called Amiga, use AmigaOS v4 or MorphOS?

AmigaOS4

3.
Should this new Amiga have Zorro slots, or not?

No, time to say byebye to the past

4.
Would you like to see Amiga connectors for ZipStick compatibility and Amiga mouse comp.?

Sure

5.
What sort of Amiga keyboard connector is the best sollution? USB only support? PS/2 alike connector like on Amiga 4000? PS/2 connector?

Why not both?

6.
How should this Amiga keyboard be? 92 keys like before, or PC alike form?

92 keys amiga

8.
What sort of tower sollutions should we use? We want to continue Amiga 4000 T design and go further with this. Is this bad, or good?

Bad, start fresh, be innovative :-)

9.
What price would you give for such Amiga?

somewhere between the Peg and A1

11.
Is Amiga NeXT a bad or good name for this project?

Bad, i dont have any other suggestions though

[Crumb]

1. If you are refering to the form factor, it should be ATX, micro-ATX, mini-itx or what you want, but it should be standard.

2. Why not both?

3. No. They are slow, expensive and outdated.

4. No. I would prefer an Amiga usb (or ps2) mouse and keyboard. You could do them with exactly the same shape, colour,etc of the originals. That legacy ports would increase the cost with little benefits. Using only usb would make it easier for newcomers.

5. Probably usb. Although I have not anything aginst ps2.

6. 92? I guess you mean 96. It should be exactly like the old keyboards but with usb connection.

7. Go for the most modern chip. Design time is long and when you finish the prototype prices of the powervr3 (does it exist?) will have come down. Who knows a powervr4 may have appeared.

8. A tower with 3  5/15 bays would be enough, and a pair of 3 1/2 too. IMHO the A4000T (cbm or escom) look like a normal pc. I wouldn't try to make it as big as an A4kT. I have one and it takes too much space. Computers are getting smaller each day. Look at the barebones/mini-itx systems. I don't say you have to go to a really small form-factor, but very big towers are butt-ugly (a 1200 look better than my 4kT), weight a lot and give you little advantages. Make it of aluminium so it weights less and keep it as small as you can but keep space for three 5 1/4 devices and two 3 1/2 devices.

9. Under 500€ or the plain board and CPU if you want it to sell them well. You could put a G3 FX so you get altivec too. I would use an A1 or PegasosII CPU slot.

10. I don't know but as long as it's a number higher than 4000 it will be ok for me.

11. A bad one and it may lead to legal problems. What has to do NeXT with Amiga? nothing. If it was Apple at least they would have something similar...

12. Forget about using DC controllers. They are no longer manofactured. DC game compatibility is not a bad idea but remember than DCs used Gigaroms and you couldn't read with a normal CD drive. You could use pirate cds of course, but I can't see that as a good idea, so forget anything about DreamCast.

[ikir]

1-The first
2-AmigaOS4 for sure. Then other OS like MorphOS and Aros wil be welcome.
3-No
4-Don't know
5-PS2+USB
6-92!!!! :-D
7-It is your choice :-)
8-Something modern?
9-The price will be high, everybody want low prices, but often it is impossibile. It an your issue :-)
10-The number model taste.....too "classic". I prefear someting like AMigaOne, Pegasos.... something new. AmigaPhoenix?
11-I like it
12-Dreamcast (or others game console compatibility) is very good, but it will take a lot of resource (time and money for you). Game Cube is a PPC machine :-D

Good luck AmiDelf ;-)

[bloodline]

1. Own motherboard? Sure why not.

2. Let the user decide.

3. No Zorro slots.

4. Include USB, and let the user decide what they want to plug in to it. maybe include an Amiga Mouse/Joysitck to USB adaptor.

5. USB.

6. Why not have the option for both. Since you have USB then the user can decide if they want to buy your custom "Amiga" keybord or use a standard one.

7. Let the user decide on the GFX chipset. For Prototype simply use the cheapest you can get docs for.

8. I like the Original commodore A4KT (Not the Amiga Tech one). But you should let the user decide.

9. If you expect it to sell, the basic MOBO should not be more than £100... a complete "ready to run" system for £500 to £600 is reasonable.

10. You can't use the name Amiga, since Amiga Inc. own it. Call it the 5k :-)

11. bad... a nice chap caleld Steve will hunt you down and hurt you.

12. I refuse to comment.

[Linchpin]

1.
Should this project go for a normal ATX PPC motherboard with PowerVR gfx custom chips or its own motherboard?

The cheapest option :-)

2.
Should this new so-called Amiga, use AmigaOS v4 or MorphOS?

OS4

3.
Should this new Amiga have Zorro slots, or not?

Nope.

4.
Would you like to see Amiga connectors for ZipStick compatibility and Amiga mouse comp.?

Yeah why not :-) Also PS2 mouse support for compatibility.

5.
What sort of Amiga keyboard connector is the best sollution? USB only support? PS/2 alike connector like on Amiga 4000? PS/2 connector?

PS/2 works well for me.

6.
How should this Amiga keyboard be? 96 keys like before, or PC alike form?

Amiga standard.

7.
Should we go for PowerVR 2 or PowerVR 3 for the prototype?

Dont know the difference, just no nvidia please.

8.
What sort of tower sollutions should we use? We want to continue Amiga 4000 T design and go further with this. Is this bad, or good?

New design. Amiga's tend to look old IMHO..

9.
What price would you give for such Amiga?

Depends on the quality and spec's

10.
We've come up with Amiga 5200, Amiga 5600 and even Amiga 6000. What should the name be of this new Amiga?

Amiga 6000 sounds nice :-)

11.
Is Amiga NeXT a bad or good name for this project?

Real bad.

12.
Any comment? What sort of companies would be interested in this project? How about Dreamcast game compatibility? The option to use DC controllers for this "new" entertaining Amiga?

Hmm dunno sorry.

[xeron]

ikir wrote:
6-92!!!! :-D

Bzzzt! Wrong. As far as I'm aware, this:



is the Amiga keyboard layout with the fewest keys (excluding Amiga 1000), and it clearly has 94. There is another layout with smaller enter and left-shift keys allowing an extra two keys to make 96.

The american & english versions of the Amiga 1000 keyboard had 89 keys:



And a google image search for "Amiga 1000 Keyboard" produces a european version, again with 2 extra keys making 91.

So, the keyboard most people know and love has 94 or 96 keys, and the original short-lived a1000 keyboard has 89 or 91.

[bloodline]

xeron wrote:

ikir wrote:
6-92!!!! :-D

Bzzzt! Wrong. As far as I'm aware, this:



is the Amiga keyboard layout with the fewest keys (excluding Amiga 1000), and it clearly has 94. There is another layout with smaller enter and left-shift keys allowing an extra two keys to make 96.

The american & english versions of the Amiga 1000 keyboard had 89 keys:



And a google image search for "Amiga 1000 Keyboard" produces a european version, again with 2 extra keys making 91.

So, the keyboard most people know and love has 94 or 96 keys, and the original short-lived a1000 keyboard has 89 or 91.

So what are you trying to say?


:lol:

[xeron]

bloodline wrote:

So what are you trying to say?

...that i'm very bored right now :-)

[rayt]

1.Should this project go for a normal ATX PPC motherboard with PowerVR gfx custom chips or its own motherboard?

I dont know, but it if it had its own motherboard it would need a custom case which makes it much more expensive. So (micro) atx seems to be the only option.

2.Should this new so-called Amiga, use AmigaOS v4 or MorphOS?

I fear you will have to ignore a lot on this thread ;-) The best option for this project might be Aros because it doesnt cost anything. But if you plan to name it Amiga6000/5200/etc then it must (also) run AmigaOS imho.

3.Should this new Amiga have Zorro slots, or not?

No its obsolete. Everything other than pci is insane. Commodore planned to replace the zorro slots with pci, too.

6.How should this Amiga keyboard be? 96 keys like before, or PC alike form?

Amiga Keyboard of course.

8.What sort of tower sollutions should we use? We want to continue Amiga 4000 T design and go further with this. Is this bad, or good?

Tower? If you have a custom board why not make an 1200 style case? It would be an altervative to the existing AmigaOne solutions.

9.What price would you give for such Amiga?

I dont know, but I fear most people (including me) wont be able to afford it.

11.Is Amiga NeXT a bad or good name for this project?

I dont think its a good name. It sounds even more stupid than amiga one.

12.Any comment? What sort of companies would be interested in this project? How about Dreamcast game compatibility? The option to use DC controllers for this "new" entertaining Amiga?

It would be a nice feature. But to be honest the DC is as dead as the amiga so there wont be new games either.:-(

Btw you havent said/asked anything about the cpu, why?

[Cymric]

AmiDelf wrote:
Only seriouse answeres will be taken. Please answere. Negative responces to this will be ignored. [... questions snipped ...] We hope to get good answers. All negative sugestions against this project, will be ignored. We want to know what you want. We want to know how this project should go on.

How nice. I'm sure the project is in good hands with an attitude like that.

I think that this is the first time ever, when a community tougether makes a new Amiga. I know that AmigaOne and PegasosII will be good alternatives. But this project aim is to give Amigans what they allways wanted. The NeXT Amiga!

If you could explain in somewhat greater detail what this 'NeXT Amiga' is supposed to do, or why the AmigaOne or Pegasos II are not 'NeXT Amigas', I can write down serious and non-negative answers to your questionnaire. Unfortunately I have a nagging feeling I am not going to get an answer, ever. I should probably stop responding altogether.

[Neo]

If you are aiming for a Amiga clone with the feel of the classic Amigas you should do the following.

1. The board should fit in a standard ATX box with a ATX power supply I think. Otherwise do as you like!
(This is simply a way to keep the cost down)

2. AmigaOS 4.0

3. Zorro slots are not needed since there is cheap PCI cards available that do the job better. However if you find some odd custom hardware that there would still be an interrest to use, then maybe add one or two if there is space left.

4. Don't know what ZipStick is!

5. Go for USB! PS2 is on it's way out.

6. Keep the 96 key style, but don't neccesarily restrict it to 96 keys. Be prepared that there are quite many national key sets to take care of and that the US keyboards lack 2 keys.

7. Don't know PowerVR!

8. If you wan't to make cases I think it's a good idea to get inspired by the Commodore designs, since they afterall made all the classic Amigas. It would be cool if someone made a desktop modell like A3000D but with a DVD recorder instead of a secondary floppy.

9. Oh, that's the tough part. We wan't it all but preferably we don't want to pay.

10. If it's a true clone that would fit into the standard line, A5000 would be OK. That would ofcourse require an agreement with Amiga Inc.

11. Stay away from trademarks. OK for Amiga but drop NeXT.

12. It would be great to see a continuation of the classic Amiga line with the hardware of the future. Would be nice with custom chip emulation. Either hardware or software.

Good luck! ;-)

[bloodline]

Cymric wrote:

AmiDelf wrote:
Only seriouse answeres will be taken. Please answere. Negative responces to this will be ignored. [... questions snipped ...] We hope to get good answers. All negative sugestions against this project, will be ignored. We want to know what you want. We want to know how this project should go on.

How nice. I'm sure the project is in good hands with an attitude like that.

I think that this is the first time ever, when a community tougether makes a new Amiga. I know that AmigaOne and PegasosII will be good alternatives. But this project aim is to give Amigans what they allways wanted. The NeXT Amiga!

If you could explain in somewhat greater detail what this 'NeXT Amiga' is supposed to do, or why the AmigaOne or Pegasos II are not 'NeXT Amigas', I can write down serious and non-negative answers to your questionnaire. Unfortunately I have a nagging feeling I am not going to get an answer, ever. I should probably stop responding altogether.

While I have similar feelings, I think you should give serious answeres to this thread. If nothing else it will allow us to disscuss the relative merits of each others thoughts :-)

[voxel]

well :-)

1. atx and why not a direct replacement form factor for A1200 and A4000?

2. AmigaOS v4!

3. PCI + Zorro III / IV slots

4. connectors for ZipStick compatibility and Amiga mouse comp.?
Yes, BTW what is zipstick? (sorry for dumb question ;-)

5. USB and A4000 like

6. exactly the same as ever, 96 keys Amiga but usb, I hate PeeCee keyboards (even with rebadged win keys)

7. go for the best, it's price will drop.
BTW if the vr2 is pin/commands compatible with the other, prototyping would cost less with the older one ;-)

8. personally, I love the A3K and A4K tower styles, but why not a new custom one ? with plenty room in it!

BTW, we need a cheap A1200 shaped replacement too ...

9. around 250 (A12K style) and 5-600 Euros (A4K style)

10. Amiga 1200+ and Amiga 5000 and up :-) or PowerAmiga :-?

11.›VERY BAD!

12. Would definitelly appeal some compagny :-)
About dreamcast compatibility : no.
About paddles, perhaps.

13 : another important ports to have on board : serial/parallel (at least one of each), UWSCSI and ATA, amiga mouse/joystick, RVB 50/60 Hz video outpout, firewire.