Classic Amiga Hardware Projects for 2014

[Wolfe]

** Build to order GBA1000 motherboards for A1000 owners, say $600 per board? **

Count me in . . . I'll take one . . . :-)

[som99]

That thing is a kludge, sticks out the side of the case where it could be damaged and needs you to make your own case for it.  A new internal A500 accelerator would hit the biggest market.  Closest thing to that requirement is currently Kipper2K's board now in production, but it doesn't include a faster processor (unless you stick a 68010 or something else on top of it, I suppose an AdSpeed might work...).

Here's a pic for people unfamiliar with this board:

I wrote flexible risers for this reason also, I guess it might be possible to mount the ACA500 on the inside if flexible cables where available for expansion ports?

[NorthWay]

Ah! A2000 powersupply replacements that are size matched would probably be a seller. Remember screws for it too.

[PanterHZ]

I'd love to see more graphics cards for classic big-box systems. Recent prices even for "low end" Picasso II-level graphics cards have been fetching over $200 USD, and Cybervision64/Picasso IV-level cards over $500 on Ebay. I'm no hardware engineer but would think for that kind of money wouldn't it be possible to design some kind of bridge for a PC video chipset to Zorro, and write CGX/Picasso96 drivers for it?

Such a solution already exists for big-box Amigas (with A2000 being the exception), and it's called the Mediator bus board. Yes it may cost a lot, but I think it gives better value for the money than old Amiga graphics cards at insane prices (like you mention here).

[PanterHZ]

Many good suggestions here, but I think the most overall sought after, and thus most realistic products are:

1.  USB cards. If it isn't possible to produce more Deneb and Subway cards,  then at least something similar for zorro slots and clockports. Maybe  even a PCMCIA to USB adapter for the A600 and A1200.

2. Zorro SATA card with maybe a couple of clockports as well.

3.  Tower cases for A1200. This shouldn't really be that difficult or  expensive to make since all that's required is standard PC cases that  are modified to fit A1200 motherboards. The cases should of course be  compatible with Mediator busboards.

[pyrre]

Lots of good ideas in here. The common theme is more cards for USB, Video, RAM and acceleration.

I no longer have an Amiga Im willing to part out and hack up. The one I have left is a prototype A3000+ that works and is restored. Its sealed and on display in my office.

What I think the best solution for all of us would be a total rebuild of a classic system like the Minimeg or FPGA. PCI slots and all are great, but you need drivers and support for far to many cards when going this way. Id like to see a board with everything we need on it. RAM upgrades being the only thing I can think of to have open for adding things on. Not including it on the board saves money and allows those on a budget to add what they can, when they can.

It should include:
Fast Ethernet
Hi resolution video with at least 512MB dedicated to it. (Video slot would also be ok but not the only way to get video out)
USB 2.0 at a minimum
IDE and SATA
SD Card slots
Ports to add new additions as they are made.

Classic hardware s getting old, and very hard to replace. Modern stuff is cheap now and able to emulate to near perfection a classic system far more capable than we ever could do on the real thing.

That is sort of my point with a new revision of a derringer.
think of it...
cpu board that fits inti the 68000 cpu socket of A500 and A2000...
it contains socket for 030 and fpu. (i have some collecting dust...)
network, ide with cf and connectivity for a cd-rom, ram expansion and usb..
all in one neat little card compatible with the scandoubler...

it would be nice.. really nice.

if this could be baked into a completely new amiga.... WOW

[pyrre]

That thing is a kludge, sticks out the side of the case where it could be damaged and needs you to make your own case for it.  A new internal A500 accelerator would hit the biggest market.  Closest thing to that requirement is currently Kipper2K's board now in production, but it doesn't include a faster processor (unless you stick a 68010 or something else on top of it, I suppose an AdSpeed might work...).

Here's a pic for people unfamiliar with this board:

could you place a derringer on top of that?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Such a solution already exists for big-box Amigas (with A2000 being the exception), and it's called the Mediator bus board. Yes it may cost a lot, but I think it gives better value for the money than old Amiga graphics cards at insane prices (like you mention here).

I'm familiar with the Mediator. What I was suggesting was something more like an updated version of the old Domino card, only with a PCI or PCI-E slot instead of ISA, that would be usuable on all Amiga's. It fits in a Zorro slot and acts as a "bridge" to a PC graphics card. For reference here is a picture of the Domino:

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

could you place a derringer on top of that?

Good question.  Although in an A500 you probably wouldn't be able to close the case, and in an A2000 maybe issues with interference with the bottom of the drive sled?  I'd ask here, where many purchasers are:

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=51339

[Akiko]

@amigakit

How about a new Quaddddroport type card so A1200 users with Subway's etc can also use your new Prisma Megamix soundcard or any other future clock port enabled products.

I know someone else occasionally does these but this won't be apparent to all your customers and apparently the production runs are rare and he's difficult to get hold of.

http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=787

[QuikSanz]

Amigakit,

Would really like to see a modern 060 accelerator maybe 80+ Mhz with a nice fast bus and memory, SATA on-board would be excellent. I'll take one for an A2k and an A4Kt.

Chris

[nicholas]

Amigakit,

Would really like to see a modern 060 accelerator maybe 80+ Mhz with a nice fast bus and memory, SATA on-board would be excellent. I'll take one for an A2k and an A4Kt.

Chris

An 060 CPU card with SATA, USB3 and DDR RAM would be brilliant.

[jasenr]

Minimig board that can connect to a legacy external Amiga floppy drive for copy protected disks...?

[agami]

Part of me agrees with many of the suggestions my fellow wedge Amiga owners have made: USB, SATA, GFX, CPU+, Audio, etc.

I have been working on making my A1200 a more usable system in the modern world, I have a Blizzard 040 accelerator, an IDEFix for improved IDE HD and multiple devices (slimline DVD/CDRW), a PCMCIA Wi-Fi card, and an Indivision 1200 AGA MK2cr so that I can use a somewhat modern 19" 4:3 LCD monitor. To round-out my A1200 a clock port USB controller, a 16bit sound card, and a graphics card would be favourable. But I have held off on purchasing some of these due to their high cost and limitations.

The problem with adding things to the A1200 is that there are inherent architecture limitations that are a bottleneck for a lot of the extenders; Maximum 2MB chip RAM limits screen resolution/colour depth, single Zorro slot, narrow IO bus means USB, network, IDE are slow, etc. Any and all extender solutions have to be clocked down so that they can operate within the A1200 in a workable manner. That's also where a lot of the cost originates from.

Rather than doing this thing piecemeal and with a crazy assortment of bolt-on extenders I would love something like the BoXeR board. The original BoXeR spec is a bit outdated by today's standards, but the concept is still valid; A melding of the Amiga AGA motherboard with the concepts of the Mediator/G-Rex PCI daughterboards, with some other architectural improvements (reduced bottlenecks). This type of hardware would get me very interested.

NATAMI was an awesome project but the (commercial) issue with NATAMI is that it doesn't provide an option to sell additional kit. A BoXeR-like board allows Amigakit to sell add-on cards.

To be perfectly honest, I am more interested in a BoXeR-like board, an ultimate AmigaOS 3.9 open platform board, than in an A1 X1000 or A1 X2000. It wouldn't be dirt cheap, but I sure as hell would rather have a nice clean slate than build my hobby PC on top of a 22 year old, can fail at any time, expansion limiting, proprietary hardware computer.

Lifting the 68k base to a higher standard will provide a better ecosystem to run the existing applications and could provide an incentive for a kickstarter to get OWB ported to OS 3.9, and would also be a nice board for AROS 68k.

[matt3k]

Such a solution already exists for big-box Amigas (with A2000 being the exception), and it's called the Mediator bus board. Yes it may cost a lot, but I think it gives better value for the money than old Amiga graphics cards at insane prices (like you mention here).

We can say the same for not only video cards, but for NICS, USB, Sound cards, etc.  The X-surf-100 did well and the Prism sound card also looks to be a good success for a zorro bus.

I would like to buy a high end video card that even uses tricks like the roxxler, a Zorro Bus card that redirects amiga video to DVI/HDMI would be a hit.

Unless a Grex type solution that gives benefits of another bus, zorro is good solution, IMHO...

[Drummerboy]

Any External PCMCIA CD/DVD for A600/A1200