A new Amiga Classic ?? Discuss!

[Methanoid]

I'm sure people are aware of the Access Amiga clone designed by Mick Tinker. This was basically an A1200 on a card that fitted in a PC 5.25 bay.

Now, run with this as an idea.

Take the design, tweak it slightly for size (so it fits mini-ITX cases like the Shuttle series). Remove the ISA slot.

Q1: How hard would it be to take a PCI design LIKE Mediator/Prometheus and put that in for 2 slots?

Q2: Would it be worth replacing the Mouse port & Keyboard with PS2 versions. There are free designs out there which work and allow 2 joysticks still connected.

Q3: Put FF/SD circuitry onboard so that you had 31.2khz output rather than 15.6 TV modes.

Q4: Would it just be easier to FIND the AntiGravity guy and get the Boxer design off him. You cannot ask Mick Tinker about Boxer as he signed (and is honouring) an NDA. If AntiGravity went bust and it was a company then the rights might be owned by some liquidator but if it was an individual then they still might belong to them but are probably worthless now.

Q5: CPU - Access ran an 030... 28mhz, you could change crystals and perhaps go as high as 56mhz but 060 is a big redesign. Brings you back to Q4!

You may wonder why I am bothering - I am not interested in the slightest in AmigaOne. I suspect there are lots of likeminded people. AmigaClassic is THE only Amiga for me.

Discuss/Rant/Dismiss as you choose!

[bloodline]

Cheaper to get a 1Ghz x86 Mini-ITX, and run Amithlon/WinUAE on it. The x86 Mini-ITX would be more powerful, more reliable and faster too.

A 680x0 ITX board would both be expensive and low-performance. Motorola/Freescale are concentrating on PowerPC and ColdFire, so there aren't any price reductions to be made for the processors you'll want to use.

Adding controllers and so on is fair enough, you need a PCI bridge to interface with the CPU and then you can throw any old (PCI, not Hypertransport) Southbridge on it.

The flickerfixer, due to the design of PLL circuitry and the precision they need to employ, is going to cost a lot of money. Those ones you can already get for your Amiga cost £70 for a very very good reason.

I suppose the best equipped people to discuss this with would be Elbox or the Coldfire-Amiga guy (www.cdtv.org.uk?) but I suspect both will tell you that you are on crack.

Just buy a Pegasos or an AmigaOne. The former is £269.99 including tax and UK shipping at http://www.pegasos.co.uk

[Cymric]

Methanoid wrote:
You may wonder why I am bothering - I am not interested in the slightest in AmigaOne. I suspect there are lots of likeminded people. AmigaClassic is THE only Amiga for me.

Ayep. Thought as much. And why is the classic design 'THE only Amiga for you'? Because of the hardware? Then why bother redesigning it to fit into an mini-ITX form factor when there is nothing worthwhile to expand the system with? Why bother putting a Mediator, PS/2 ports, 31 kHz video output and a lousy 50 MHz 68060 on it when the obvious solution is to simply stick to what is already here, has all the features you desire (with a CPU ten times as fast), and has been shown to work, i.e. A1 or Peg2?

My point is that people should at bloody long last accept that the classic Amiga hardware is dead. You can still use the machine, and if it does what you want and you're happy with it, great. Hope you have a good time. A redesign might have worked in 1994. It won't in 2004. Asking for it is a pointless and futile excercise: people are not interested, it's too expensive, and doesn't remove the machines inherent limitations which are becoming a grating nuisance.

Helpful hint: on amigaworld.org, a nostalgic article has appeared about migrating to a Peg2 and leaving behind the 'true' Amiga. Perhaps you should read it and ponder about it for a while.

[Acill]

I agree with the above, and I wrote that leaving the Amiga for a Peg article! If you want clasic hardware, then just use wahts out. Its pointless to make something "new" based on old custom chips that are not made any longer and use a CPU thats so out of date then emulation core from UAE and the MorphOS/OS4 is faster and seems to work better.

[Methanoid]

I had a look at the article and the "official" Pegasos website and guess what... you cannot buy the motherboard.

All a bit pointless then isnt it?

[sdesros]

I believe some dealers still have the boards.  Unfortuantly the Pegasos at the moment seems to be limited to runs done every 15th of a month after a bunch of preorders have been filled.  

Even with that limit on production, chances are you'd get a Pegasos (or AmigaOne) much faster then it would take to design and build a new Amiga classic in ITX form factor...  Not to mention find a source of AGA chips.

[HopperJF]

if you like real amiga architecture then check out the coldfire project

[jeffimix]

@Neko

No, there really isn't a good reason for those scandoublers costing so much. Find an external RCA->VGA box on the web, like for an Xbox or PS2, costs 60 bucks, even very nice ones, some even accept rgb input. I saw one on sale, 4 input switcher to VGA (60Hz) 42.95USD. In EU I suppose it'd work very well with an amiga Scart adaptor (would work with that in US too, just have to import the adaptor and vga box)

[Acill]

Yes you can get them, just not directly from Genesi is all. Look at the dealers and get in touch with one. Several have boards still.

[Senex]

I don't see that much use in a new 68k "classic" because of the lack of really improved performance compared with existing "classic" Amigas.

But something I'd indeed consider cool and lacking besides Pegasos/A1 would be a true Amiga home computer again - not necessarily a high-end PPC CPU but some "custom" hardware on-board already for certain multimedia capabilities.

Would be no device to change to for current desktop users, obviously - but given the AmigaOS's intuitiveness and user-friendlyness, it might be a nice machine for those who don't own a computer yet and wouldn't use it for much more than writing a letter or club magazine besides the board's multimedia stuff.

To put it in a nutshell: while we do have already continued the x000 Amiga models by the Pegasos and A1, also having a x00 Amiga again would be nice, IMHO, too.

[AmiGR]

The problem is that most clueless people that get their first computer, buy the fastest machine available on the
market, getting ripped off quite easily.
A home computer wouldn't cut it in the specific age, the MHz age...
In some years maybe.

[Computolio]

    Actually, such a product might be useful as a replacement motherboard that would fit in a variety of old Amiga cases. It could use old 68020s and/or 68040s pulled from ancient trashed Macs, along with old Paula and CIA chips (which never changed throughout the Amiga line). It's true that a clone AGA chipset would have to be built, but if most of the research and design were done as an open-source kind of side project it wouldn't be impossible. Some of the enhancements would be a fairly simple matter, too- it would be very cheap to throw in an audio mixer and IDE interface. It could also be made modular, with a central board having all the essentials for every machine that plugs into a simple extra board specific to each case having a variety of slots and ports.

    It's also sort of been done before (there was a clone motherboard made for the A1000 called the Phoenix). It wouldn't be any sort of high-speed scream machine or anything, just a slightly enhanced replacement for old and failing equipment. Think an Amiga equivalent of the C-One, but with nowhere near the C-One's level of crazy enhancements.

[itix]

And where is the point?

680x0 is expensive but slow. Without custom chips it is not (classic) Amiga, but on the other hand AGA chipset is already slow, poor and unavailable. Really, AGA chips can't be produced anymore and AGA emulation in BoXer never worked IIRC.

Get x86 box, install WinUAE and you have new Amiga.

(Or buy a *** :lol:)

@Methanoid:

I have them in stock as do other dealers.

The "official" Pegasos website is not offering boards for sale because production capacity is all used up. It doesn't mean you can't buy one, just Genesi aren't in the business of taking preorders. They'll be back available later.

In the meanwhile, pegasos.co.uk, ggsdata.se and a couple of others have systems in stock.

If you're in the USA, Magnetic Systems keep advertising on the front page, how can you miss them?

Neko