Natami project freezed, Tina project folded...what next??
 

WTF is up with these projects, they always seem to stop and vanish. Yes, the Amiga curse is a good explanation but I'd like to know more specifics. Natami was cancelled because...it was Thomas's project...but is that a valid reason? Tina project has vanished along with its homepage...what happened?
WTF?? :guru

Well, as for the Natami, it actually is a valid reason! There were certain "interesting" (make of that what you will!) people involved in that project which really killed it IMHO. One of these persons was someone who can talk all day long but all that is produced is hot air, still waiting that this person shows me how to disassemble the Kickstart ROM in 1 week *sic*.

Even in companies where people get paid to do work, projects gets killed quite often and never see the light of day.

These kinds of projects are entirely dependent on people's interest, and it is often most interesting to have the big ideas and do the system design. Once you get to the debugging and maturing phase, many people lose interest. Of course, these products might end up being sold so there's still an economic factor in it, but I would say they're still mainly driven by enthusiasm.

dont think you can blame it just on that one person. natami has been worked on for years before even the one you are talking about got involved and the progress pace was not that promising as far as i could judge by its internet presence. at that time the development at individual computers was more likely to succeed and be delivered. so chances are, either way natami would actually ot get much further.

also i talked to someone who has one of the units himself, and he actually claimed it working within its limits.

also look at all other projects. tina was a certain fail to start with. vampire 600 has actually been done but i guess its developer had to burnout sooner or later. fpga arcade still isnt released, not to talk about its 060 card. and so on..

in conclusion i guess even hardware has an only chance as open community project. even though i dont think there is enough energy along with skill left even if bundled.

I think it's because they're not open source. Most of them anyway.

So a couple of minor road bumps and tada the project disappears forever.

Natami was actually really promising hardware and software, it's a real shame it's gone under. Even just the n68050 would have been promising to have been open sourced, then things like the Vampire 600 might have been designed differently to accommodate it, instead it's vanished into the Apollo project and is still closed :/

If you're going to start one of these things, start it on GitHub, put _everything_ on there, give it a BSD/GPL3 license or something.

Yes, because OpenSource projects never get abandoned. ;-)

But i do agree with you to a point..
At least, if you're not going to continue your project, open source it..

As for the Vampire, didn't majsta leave enough info (hardware to kipper2k, etc) about it that someone else could continue it? Just no one has yet..

desiv

Well, I know that the project was started long before this certain person turned up. However, that very person was one of the reasons for the project becoming known to a lot of people due to his aggressive "marketing style" and in the end that was what killed it IMHO as there were lots of false promises made and people believed them. Until they realised that, except for hot air, not much happened. And this surely wasn't the fault of the hardware developer.

There might be other reasons as well but for me, this is one of the major reasons that this project is in its current state which doesn't look too good.

I do believe that there are working prototypes but these few units still don't mean that the project is finished and I don't think it ever will be.

imho it was too complicated. to get a project anywhere near completion it must be designed as simple as it gets from the very start.

according to majsta they were working on it. but then stringray would probably say t will never get anywhere as long as certain people are involved. at least tobiflex core proved again to be working.

yes, opening the sources i sure not the whole solution, it doesnt mean someone unfamiliar can just continue with it, but its the least common denominator to make any progress even possible.

aeon should buy natami and finish the job, that's the good thing to do !

i think the project as such got where it could ever get and has actually served the goal it was meant for, namely the fun on fooling with it. im certain thomas had fun with it for the time being, and at some point he has been annoyed enough for something that s been supposed just to be fun or got otherwise demotivated and has given up.

even if he succeeded bringing up such a complicated hardware as far as an actual release might be thinkable, the delivery and support would be whole new challenge, and beyond that likely not fun at all.

Goal reached? Defnitely not! It was supposed to be a next generation Amiga available to the "masses" (in terms of people still interested in buying new Amiga hardware) and except for a few people who are in possession of prototype versions it isn't available to anyone! Not what I call a reached goal!

Most probably as he wouldn't have started such a project otherwise.

His biggest mistake was to let certain people into the team as these people (specially one person!) turned this from a "silent hobby project" to something completely different. Before that he could work on it at his very own pace but once the "marketing campaign" was started this project wasn't anything like a hobby project anymore as now people had expectations. Which were fueled by always new (and often quite ridiculous!) announcements of new features. Besides, the way people who actually wanted to help were treated by the "marketing person" didn't help either!


See above, this could have been handled easily and peacefully at Thomas' own pace without any stress if he had't made the mistake to let other people ruin his very own project.

@Stingray

Just a short comment because the topic already nerves me...

You were a "team member" on natami-forum? I am not aware of and am fascinating how good people all know without being involved

"There were certain "interesting" (make of that what you will!) people involved in that project "

I was one of the "interesting" people on the forum, I did not really contribute much to the development at the early stage it was in (lack of hardware knowledge). If I remember right it was the project why I rejoined the community. When I saw where this "one-man develops all" leads to I decided myself for opensource (Aros 68k) because it is the only base where our platform might have a future.

Regarding the noise (discussions) created on the forum it was indeed disfficult to see what reality and what just ideas were. But before you continue with the "blame game" Thomas Hirsch himself showed it in the public years ago. If he really wanted "no pressure/expectations" from outside he should have kept it as "his" private homebrew project and not go into public. Or, when he realize that discussions are becoming fantasy he could have simply written down state and what he is working on and plans to do. Or he could have created a blog and posted there once a month. Of course he would have needed something to post then. I asked him (must be more than two years ago) if he would think about opensource it so that others could have continued. He decided to take the work with him (what is his right of course) but then I ask you where are the news about it? Nobody can pressure him now but obvously no progress. It could be that he appears from one moment to another and says "here is it" but I do not believe it. The simple truth is such a project is too much for one person and the work (debugging) is not always fun. When you do it for commercial reasons money matters, at a home project motivation is more difficult. Besides the hardware is very old now and expensive because of low sales so I more hope for cores that run on standard FPGA hardware. Then there also exist FPGA Arcade and Emulation.

I do not want to bash anyone now, people involved can do their own decisions. I myself will concentrate on opensource as a result of the events.

"See above, this could have been handled easily and peacefully at Thomas' own pace without any stress if he had't made the mistake to let other people ruin his very own project"

Thomas H. showed the board years ago in public. Why when you are right? And where are now the boards with new core? And do not say he lost motivation because of all the bad people around that is crap. If that is the whole base of such a ambitious project then better never start it. It is the "I want do it all alone and reinvent every wheel because it is my project" attitutde that harms our community.

There is no "blame game" here, not from me anyway, reading your wall of text I see a lot of "let's blame Thomas Hirsch" stuff though... I was just stating what I think and what I experienced when I had to deal with a certain "interesting" person involved in the Natami project and I am neither talking about Thomas Hirsch nor you here which should have been clear anyway. And guess what, due to the behaviour of a certain individual I stayed away from the Natami forum and only checked it when I needed some good entertainment. There might be a reason why I have my opinion, dear "Team member".

And open source, as good as it may be, would not have helped when it comes to certain problems regarding the Natami but since all this is speculation anyway I won't comment on it anymore.

I'm guessing you're referring to Gunnar von Boehn. He was pretty enthusiastic about the Natami and being part of it, but I don't know if he's to blame for anything. He has a personal homepage showing some of his projects, and he seems well-merited to be honest. IIRC, Thomas Hirsch commented here on EAB on the Natami hype and rumors, and the promises made by other developers, long before the current hiatus, and I think he felt he had defused and dealt with things appropriately.

What I'm really curious to know is if Thomas has dropped the project entirely, or if he's still working on it on his own.

I think the only way to look at any Amiga project is that if it eventually gets released then be happy, until it does.....just don't count on it :p

I was always very sceptical of this particular project but there's been other projects that looked like they were practically finished 3 years ago which still haven't made it to retail. This is just the nature of the retro scene unfortunately :guru

I don't believe there is much to buy. With the exception of Thomas they were (as we say in England), "all talk and no trousers (show)" with Gunnar von Boehn being the worst.

Thomas was a true engineer who in the brief contacts I had with him knew what he was doing.

I for one am not gonna hold my breath anymore for these kind of projects. I so waited for Natami and when it vanished then it was time to wait for Tina...well :guru

The feeling could be described as when something is held in front of you on a silver platter but you just can't reach it. It's so close in your grasp but alas, it goes down like the holy grail in Indiana Jones last crusade - never to be recovered again.

Nothing like a good rant to clear the air, let the ranting commence! :cheese

I know that people prefer real hardware to emulated environments (in whatever form) but as long as we do not have new hardware we have enough other (cheap and fast) options available. If 68k has a future most users will use it emulated in one or another way anyway.

Thanks for input. Me really wants the real deal - re-created in fpga or whatever as long as its Amiga hardware and not emulation :). Hard to explain but it's an important thing for me.
No offence to great Amiga-emulators out there ;). I have uses for the emulators also!

Don't forget MiniMig AGA which was first demo'd in Feb 2010 and still no release.