New Amiga motherboards from Jens

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by bubbob42

Ok, who again has been the one who said say the "V"-word and thus brought this discussion into another nonsense-spiral?

Ye, I was afraid this would happen.
Long story short. Its curious that ppl suggest waiting for a product not yet announced and with a non existing release date. The stuff Im waiting for is at least being worked at.
If "the other thing" ever comes out, ill look into it, meanwhile I'm waiting in line for the Amiga Reloaded mobo for several reasons. At least one of them being, "hey look, a new Amiga mobo, I want one" ;-)

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Its curious that ppl suggest waiting for a product not yet announced and with a non existing release date.

But that's the Amiga way!

[Zetr0]

I think, for me, it comes down to cost, performance and compatibility.

From what I have read its a bit vapour-ware as to specifications, so commenting on its proposed specifications is the best we could do.

For the price point, which again has the caveat of not being 100% set, I would expect more, perhaps an 020/030 @ 40Mhz on the motherboard with 8MB FAST RAM 2MB CHIP.

Personally I feel this product is a too little too late and will have to go some way to compete with FPGA implementations that get both cheaper to produce every day as well as improved compatibility.

I am sure there will be plenty of purists that would want an A1200-Reloaded motherboard - but that will come down to compatibility with additional hardware and I will be surprised if that is guaranteed - to be honest I don't see any Apollo's working with it - or atleast being supported.

For me at the moment, I could spend £60 on a refurbished motherboard or slightly cheaper and refurbish this myself - but then again I don't think I am the market for this A1200-Reloaded product.

[eXeler0]

I can understand that some ppl dont see the point of a ~€200 motherboard, especially as you can get old working ones for much less. But then that applies to most things around us, doesnt it?
For me personally, a new A1200-compatible mobo *is* meaningful and Im ok with a price up to ~€200 *provided* I can use it for what I intend to.
However, if it turns out it is neither compatible with Vamp1200 nor Apollo 1260 then it will be useless to me, and Ill go for a refurbished one instead.

[Leffmann]

Originally Posted by bubbob42

Ok, who again has been the one who said say the "V"-word and thus brought this discussion into another nonsense-spiral?

If you consider the most innovative hardware work for Amiga ever to be nonsense, does this mean the Amiga Reloaded will be built to reject the Vampire 1200 board?

[bubbob42]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

If you consider the most innovative hardware work for Amiga ever to be nonsense, does this mean the Amiga Reloaded will be built to reject the Vampire 1200 board?

You misunderstood. I totally share your rating of the Vampire. And to my knowledge, Jens has never intentionally designed a product to be incompatible with other vendors'.

But mentioning it in every development thread while hinting at something like "we don't need this anymore, we will have (standalone) Vampire" annoys me.

[dirkies]

If the board is compatible with a v1200 it will be a win-win situation for sure. And i believe a v1200 will sell for more than 200€ so it may be a good thing to happen. Wait and see...

[Zetr0]

@Thread

Firstly I am not going to Poo-Bah this potential product as I simply see that if there is enough of a market to risk investment it will be made. While I don't think I am likely to be the target market I know lots of people as well as organisations that would invest in this to replace ageing systems / stock.

What I can say about the underlying upset caused by mentioning the Vampire, especially since it is being mentioned in every other thread - don't get upset about a hypothetical discussion on another piece of hardware.

I wonder if some have missed the fact that this product is a game-changer, not only in practical application today but also its perceived application of tomorrow - like this product.

Rationally it can make projects like this almost obsolete (from a financial sense) over night or very hard to get backers for it. While its not overly fair to place hypothetical product against each other - we have seen the beginnings of what awaits for our community with FPGA technology -

I wonder if the resentment on both sides is because of its perceived and credible potential - I feel some get enthused about saying it from the roof tops while others are infused, having to read about it all the time.

On its positive side its great to see the community so excited, where perhaps its downside is that it becomes a yard stick to measure everything else against.

I don't think, nor would I suggest for one minute that Individual Computers would actively block any accelerator from working with this proposed device. I would be surprised if any guarantee would be given with exception to the line of ACA adaptors - and this wouldn't be any marketing tactic - just simple common sense that a company couldn't take on the hordes of support calls for 20 year old equipment.

[bubbob42]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

I would be surprised if any guarantee would be given with exception to the line of ACA adaptors - and this wouldn't be any marketing tactic - just simple common sense that a company couldn't take on the hordes of support calls for 20 year old equipment.

Exactly. And with FPGA addons, it's even more difficult; I'm pretty sure there are going to be compatibility tests to make both hypothetical products work well together. But one cannot guarantee anything beyond that point - FPGA (core) is going to change, maybe board is going to change, etc.

In practice, whoever is second to release a product will usually be forced to care about compatibility with the first because no one could afford a split in such a small market (again).

[Romanujan]

Faster "IDE", faster chipram access (8 bitplanes won't slow the CPU chip RAM access down), more internal expansions (clockports!) for sound cards, USB controllers or Ethernet adapters, uses modern power supply, several 25 year old chips replaced by modern ones (so less likely to fail). Looks good to me, even to be used with Vampire only.

Unfortunately, no news since a long time...

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Romanujan

Faster "IDE", faster chipram access (8 bitplanes won't slow the CPU chip RAM access down), more internal expansions (clockports!) for sound cards, USB controllers or Ethernet adapters, uses modern power supply, several 25 year old chips replaced by modern ones (so less likely to fail). Looks good to me, even to be used with Vampire only.

Unfortunately, no news since a long time...

Agreed
And check post #590 Jens shared a few words with us, project is still alive. We just need to wait some more..

Skickat från min HTC One via Tapatalk

[Estrayk]

Will be cool that Jens add his Graffiti technology in the A1200 reloaded.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Will be cool that Jens add his Graffiti technology in the A1200 reloaded.

Why? Graffiti is not very useful for much except displaying still pictures, unless he updates it (which might be possible, I don't know). The main problem in the previous Grafitti implementations (Indivision ECS etc.) is that video data for it is supplied through chip ram which is way too slow for this purpose. An RTG board normally has its own very fast dedicated memory.

[spudje]

I do think we might see some combination of the reloaded board, optional (Indivision like) video card and the talks about Jens potentially buying P96.

[UberFreak]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Yep I don't see much point in buying a new Amiga motherboard and then plugging a Vampire into it.

You might as well just go stand-alone if you want an FPGA Amiga,

This nonsense again.
Where does it say that Vampire will replace the Amiga chipset?

So far it is just a CPU with RTG frame-buffer, so please stick to the facts.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by bubbob42

In practice, whoever is second to release a product will usually be forced to care about compatibility with the first because no one could afford a split in such a small market (again).

Won't happen. Gunnar has my offer for help with an A1200 version, and since the A1200 accelerator-connector is basically a 68020-type bus, I will just stick as close to that Motorola spec as possible (and iron out some of the Gayle bugs that cause hangs here and there). It will be hard to make it work on the A1200, but not on the Reloaded.

I'm just extremely careful not to call something "supported" because I don't want to end up in support-hell, trying to help people getting things to work together that I haven't supplied. With my offer to Gunnar, there is even a chance that I'll supply a Vampire-compatible card.

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Will be cool that Jens add his Graffiti technology in the A1200 reloaded.

The plan is still to add this to Indivision AGA MK2, so it will automatically be available to Reloaded-users.

Originally Posted by demolition

The main problem in the previous Grafitti implementations (Indivision ECS etc.) is that video data for it is supplied through chip ram which is way too slow for this purpose.

Remember that the Relaoded board has improved chipram speed.

Jens

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Remember that the Relaoded board has improved chipram speed.

Sure, but unless it is substantially faster (10x at least), it is still quite slow.

[spudje]

Very happy to read we may see some collaboration between Gunmar and Jens!!!

[wXR]

Whoa yeah, that is good news indeed!

[bubbob42]

Let's postpone the celebrations until we heard the other side...sorry for playing sceptic.

Would be great, though.