Amiga Clone Natami - Planned For Summer 2008

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Anyway, could someone have an educated guess as to when this will 'hit the stores'?

I have been involved in shaping a fully working prototype electronics/computer device to a consumer grade product in the past. And believe me it takes time, effort, money, and skilled management to be able to accomplish this goal.

The Natami team doesnt even have a complete working prototype yet, so at least an estimated guess would be of one more year from today. It will of course, depend on the pace that they are capable of moving on with each step of this process.

The steps between a fully working prototype with a cool idea and an actual consumer grade product, are numerous and quite exhausting.

So the road ahead is long and full of bumps.
I sincerely hope they make it a consumer grade product. But it will be difficult to get it out of the hobby production scheme and see it widespread.

Anyway, I hope they make it!

[alexh]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

When I read stuff like 'Frame generation .......... ECS, fixed 28MHz pixel clock', I wonder why they don't just implement their SuperAGA logic?

Cos it is vapourware? I believe in Thomas Hirsch as an engineer. His posts are logical and concise. Little or no bragging or bull. If he can find the time to do it then I believe something will get implemented eventually.

Whether it will be value for money on current generation FPGA silicon is another matter.

[TCD]

Thanks for your thoughts guys I thought that 'ready for production' might have been a bit exaggerated.

[chiark]

There is a lot that can be learnt from the commercial world, and those with commercial experience. And if they're too proud to do that, they could learn a lot from the Pandora handheld... (Delivery 2 years late and counting...)

[Methanoid]

Standing by to eat hat if/when it sees production

Could we get a decent 2011 for Amiga hardware ???

[HenryCase]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Thanks for your thoughts guys I thought that 'ready for production' might have been a bit exaggerated.

I'm sorry, but can you read? Where in the announcement I posted did it say 'ready for production':

Originally Posted by HenryCase

Pictures of assembled Natami MX board released:
http://www.natami.net/hardware.htm
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=1&note=33366

The point is that the first pictures of the redesigned Natami hardware have been released.
Nothing more, nothing less. The MX board was designed to be closer to a commercial-level board, but there's still plenty of work to go.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by HenryCase

I'm sorry, but can you read? Where in the announcement I posted did it say 'ready for production':

Yeah, reading every post in this thread can be a tad complicated :

Originally Posted by cv643d

Hey,,. . wait a minute, was not this project ridiculed here some time ago, and now it is ready for production?!

[HenryCase]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Yeah, reading every post in this thread can be a tad complicated :

Oh, how could I have missed that, you quoted cv643d, that well known leader of the Natami team.

It's simple, if you want to know what's happening with the project, go straight to the source, don't rely on Chinese whispers.

It may be 3 years late but it still great to see that they are at it, I think that this will be a great successor to the Amiga, keep at it guys! I for one am willing to bet my money on this machine, of all the next generation Amigas I would be willing to invest money in this.

[Predseda]

And if the sales will go well, we could later get the PPC processor card maybe

[TCD]

Originally Posted by HenryCase

It's simple, if you want to know what's happening with the project, go straight to the source, don't rely on Chinese whispers.

I asked if someone could have an educated guess as to when this will 'hit the stores', but I guess I will live with my lack of knowledge instead. Anyway, all the best and fingers crossed nonetheless.

[HenryCase]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

I asked if someone could have an educated guess as to when this will 'hit the stores', but I guess I will live with my lack of knowledge instead. Anyway, all the best and fingers crossed nonetheless.

Fair enough, thank you for clarifying TCD.

vidarh posted a useful guide to how much work is left to do on the previous page of this thread. This information was obtained directly from Thomas Hirsch himself. This was the last progress update on the LX board, work needs to be done to bring the MX board up to this level, then there's the final work to finish off SuperAGA, 68050 and the rest of the features. There's not an official release date or price yet, best thing to do is watch the progress and look for clues on how far away a release is.

Even if the Natami isn't ready yet, the assembled MX board is a major milestone, so it's worth celebrating.

[vidarh]

Originally Posted by gulliver

The Natami team doesnt even have a complete working prototype yet

They had one a couple of years ago based on a modified C-One board combined with having had the ability to test the majority of the design on FPGA dev boards. The LX board they were bringing up last autumn was designed based on the lessons from that, and was used to verify the design and start integrating the FPGA cores on the real hardware. The MX board is a further refinement and hoped to be the final production board unless they run into any major show stoppers.

You might be right about the timeframe given that this is a part time project for everyone involved, but it's not like the MX board is their first hardware iteration.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by ami_junkie

It may be 3 years late but it still great to see that they are at it, I think that this will be a great successor to the Amiga, keep at it guys! I for one am willing to bet my money on this machine, of all the next generation Amigas I would be willing to invest money in this.

My thoughts exactly.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by vidarh

They had one a couple of years ago based on a modified C-One board combined with having had the ability to test the majority of the design on FPGA dev boards. The LX board they were bringing up last autumn was designed based on the lessons from that, and was used to verify the design and start integrating the FPGA cores on the real hardware. The MX board is a further refinement and hoped to be the final production board unless they run into any major show stoppers.

You might be right about the timeframe given that this is a part time project for everyone involved, but it's not like the MX board is their first hardware iteration.

I know it is not the first hardware prototype, it is a more advanced prototype.

I have been a steady follower of the project since 2008, and yet there has been great progress, but not a completely working prototype. It just takes you little time to see that: For example, the pictures that show the running programs, still present some visual issues to be addressed/developed in regards to backwards compatibility. I am glad to know that they are being addressed, but everyone knows it is not ready yet.
All in all, the project looks cool, and I look forward to see its completion, and see this new MX board as a positive step towards it.

[NovaCoder]

Another way to look at it is to take the SAM 440 as a recent example of a company bringing custom 'Amiga like' hardware to retail. Even with the resources and business experience of both ACube, its partner compaines and the people who make the operating system itself, they are still arguably in a BETA state 2 years after it was released

[NathanTolbert]

my feelings are mixed on the Natami. On one side I am quite happy to see something like this even being attempted, and having seen the youtube videos of it running in ecs am surprised at the level of compatibility they have achieved at all. I highly doubt that I would be motivated enough ever in my life to get as far as they have now, let alone finish. But on the other side, my pessimistic side, I don't see this project ever finishing. There are long periods of time where there is nothing heard, or barely anything and you wonder if they gave up and didn't say. It reminds me of the Clone A project. I hear it's going to be incredible, awesome and just fantastic. Great! When will we hear more about it? Soon, maybe? If both the Natami and the Clone A come to market, I will be poor for quite a while. One thing I would like to ask about, and this from my ignorance about FPGA's but how is it they expect to get 50MHz+ out of an FPGA for their softcore project the N68050, when all of the information I am finding on softcores is that most don't run that fast at all. Is it something to do with the design? I just have millions of questions, and I tried to sign up at their forums to express my support and ask some questions, but I haven't received a response yet.

[matthey]

Hello, neighbor. Fancy finding someone else from Kansas on an English Amiga board .

Originally Posted by NathanTolbert

One thing I would like to ask about, and this from my ignorance about FPGA's but how is it they expect to get 50MHz+ out of an FPGA for their softcore project the N68050, when all of the information I am finding on softcores is that most don't run that fast at all. Is it something to do with the design?

Good question. I asked the same question after finding this fpga ColdFire running at ~80MHz speed in a CycloneIII...

http://www.ip-extreme.com/downloads/...I_Brochure.pdf

The answer I received was basically that that ColdFire fpga processor is an older version and not very well optimized for an fpga. More parallelism of a processor in fpga takes more space and time but allows for higher speeds. Here is the thread of my question...

http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=2&note=26978

I just have millions of questions, and I tried to sign up at their forums to express my support and ask some questions, but I haven't received a response yet.

Can you at least read the forum posts and search? Does my forum link above work? I don't remember any kind of delay or problem signing up. Maybe that has changed.

[NathanTolbert]

I can indeed search and read the forums but I cannot do more than that. Are you in the Kansas City area Matthey? I'm just curious as there aren't many Amiga users left around here.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by NathanTolbert

One thing I would like to ask about, and this from my ignorance about FPGA's but how is it they expect to get 50MHz+ out of an FPGA for their softcore project the N68050, when all of the information I am finding on softcores is that most don't run that fast at all. Is it something to do with the design? I just have millions of questions, and I tried to sign up at their forums to express my support and ask some questions, but I haven't received a response yet.

Most softcores on FPGAs are optimized to take few resources. This is because the primary use of the FPGA in most applications is not to take the place of a high-performance CPU so much as it is to combine two chips into one for a low-cost solution. The ways that the N68050 will be faster are due primarily to two techniques: pipelining, and opcode fusion.

Pipelining works by dividing each instruction into stages such that the next instruction can start before the previous one has completed executing. Opcode fusion recognizes multiple opcodes as being a representation of something that it can execute in one operation without having to modify the instruction set. An example of opcode fusion is move d1,d2; add d3,d2. Although it sits in memory as two opcodes the N'050 will recognize that since they both use the same destination register they will do a d2=d3+d1 operation. Another example is bne label; add d1,d2; label:. Since the branch only skips one opcode it can be converted into a predicated opcode.

I hope this answers some questions and if you private message me the email address you used to sign up for the NatAmi forums, I can send your message along to Peter to check out the forum software.