A question about XENA/XMOS

[Tripitaka]

The XMOS community is quite active, it's a great standalone platform.  http://www.xcore.com/projects

I will take a look through that lot later. I've not looked at the current state of XMOS projects for a while now.

[spirantho]

Wrong, because it is to me and other people. For me, and many others, the whole point is the hardware. This is completely subjective.

I know where you're coming from - and the whole essence of the so-called "Classic" Amiga is indeed the hardware. I just meant that the hardware isn't going to be developed any more - there's no future for custom chips. Luckily FPGA means that we can still have hardware solutions compatible to the Amiga, but custom fabbed ICs? Not going to happen.

Again, completely subjective. The future for me isn't AOS4 or MorphOS, and I'm not even remotely interested in those software platforms. I'm not saying these platforms suck, just that I'm not interested

Nothing wrong with that. If you're happy with a platform that isn't going to be advanced any more (there won't be any more 68K AmigaOSes - though AROS covers that somewhat) then there's no need to go NG at all. Personally I like all the bells and whistles that NG OS's bring, but as always - Your Mileage May Vary.

[Linde]

What's the point ? Processors are getting faster and faster. UAE is just a little app now. Plus apps are no longer that useful and have mostly been replaced now. What's the point of spending many resources having a Xena solution whrn UAE already does its job perfectly?

I've tried E-UAE, WinUAE and UAE, but none of them do perfect emulation. Most importantly hardware emulation in a multitasking system requires buffers for everything, which naturally makes input/output lag. It's an awful experience if you are playing games.

[itix]

The obvious one I'm tempted by is as a floppy controller, like the Catweasel which is constantly unavailable.

http://www.kryoflux.com/

[Iggy]

...The future for me isn't AOS4 or MorphOS, and I'm not even remotely interested in those software platforms. I'm not saying these platforms suck, just that I'm not interested

Not a problem.
Personally, I'm bored stiff with Amiga legacy hardware and have been experimenting with other home brew designs.
I'd like to build a cheap '040 based system with PCI expansion.
Without legacy compatibility, this should be very cheap.

And for me, the future is MorphoS (or whatever it gets called once it morphs again into 64bit).
But then, I'd freely admit that MorphOS is not Amiga (can't be - its not cursed).

[spirantho]

http://www.kryoflux.com/

I know about the Kryoflux, and it seems a pretty cool piece of kit.

But I'd much rather have built-in support for reading floppies, rather than a USB dongle. It all seems a bit too hacky to be "official" with a machine, if you see what I mean. Plus the Kryoflux people have never shown any interest in the Amiga as any more than a target machine, as far as I know - they want to read Amiga disks, but not on an NG Amiga. I could be wrong on that front, but I've never seen such interest.

[itix]

I know about the Kryoflux, and it seems a pretty cool piece of kit.

But I'd much rather have built-in support for reading floppies, rather than a USB dongle. It all seems a bit too hacky to be "official" with a machine, if you see what I mean.

If you utilize on-board XMOS chip you need additional circuitry.

Plus the Kryoflux people have never shown any interest in the Amiga as any more than a target machine, as far as I know - they want to read Amiga disks, but not on an NG Amiga. I could be wrong on that front, but I've never seen such interest.

I dont understand what you mean here. There is source code and they offered help when I was about to port the software package to MorphOS. Unfortunately I never had time to do it.

[ElPolloDiabl]

What the earlier poster suggested: People want a user-friendy Amiga OS that they can launch the old software from. They would prefer not to go near a Windows or Linux.

FPGA plus AROS 68k would fit that bill.

FPGA still needs some development. Perhaps in the future someone will make an add-in card.

[QuikSanz]

If done properly you could do it with JIT on OS4 with a proper display adapter.
a good FPGA would fit the bill well.

Chris