New Amiga motherboards from Jens

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by IanP

The original wedges hold a lot of affection for many users. Looking at it you instantly know it's a true Amiga and not some anonymous PC.

I agree with this..
If it looks like PC box it might as well be a real PC running UAE.

[Steve T]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

... but if it doesn't even do everything an Amiga can do more-or-less out of the box i must have missed the point of it.

Perhaps 'Reloaded' is the wrong term to use this time, unless you consider the extra boards as one package.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

I agree with this..
If it looks like PC box it might as well be a real PC running UAE.

Still waiting for those stutter free tearing free screen updates..

[Lord Aga]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Ok...
Lets try this again.. :-)
Jens lists 10 features and ppl can cast votes - between 1 and 10 points on the respective features (where 1 point = sucks, dont want and 10 points = fantastic, I want this now).
Now...hows that gonna be trolled? ;-)

I assure you no trolling is intended
Just wanted to point out that polls wouldn't do much good.

I would believe that Jens has about 95% of the design finalized. In his head at least if not in software (hardware?). There could be minor changes or some easy to implement features, but nothing major.

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

if the point is a super-expandable barebones Amiga i don't know why not go for some PC form factor.

If Jens decides to go for a power board in the future, his best bet would probably be A2000 case size.

[eXeler0]

Its of course entirely possible that Jens made up his mind about the design a long time ago and what ppl say about it has zero impact.

As I said before, there are a lot of working a500 / a1200 mobos out there. Probably a lot more than the amount of active users.

So its not a marketing mystery that the product you try to sell should solve a problem that someone actually has.
So if releasing the wrong product means we miss our only shot at a new A1200 mobo then yea, its understandable ppl want that the design "gets it right".
Id imagine that a product thats high in demand should be good business for Jens.

So if the demand for this "reloaded" mobo is low, it might not be because the Amigans dont want new hardware, it might simply be s case of misunderstanding what exactly the customers value...

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by IanP

The original wedges hold a lot of affection for many users. Looking at it you instantly know it's a true Amiga and not some anonymous PC.

yes indeed, it does for me too. but so does the philosophy that it works straight away without having to have separate add-on cards to do basic stuff, and you don't have to worry about compatibility of different components because it's just a single board.

however, i would also quite like to build a complete new Amiga, with all new case &c.. i never liked full ATX cases to be honest but there are just so many more options with standard form-factors. In fact i devised my own form factor "narrow ATX" that would fit in an ATX tower or desktop case and also in an A1200 (at least dimensions-wise, the back panel would be an issue)

[AmigaWorld]

This is great news! Will the video port have a modern VGA or HDMI port?

[voxel]

who sees that with all the remaining chips gone like that there is no way to repair the old REAL Amigas now ???

[NovaCoder]

How about doing it properly and replacing Lisa with an FPGA equivalent. Obviously you'd include a few minor enhancements like a flicker fixer, chunky mode and a 64 bit blitter to make full use of that faster CHIPRAM

seriously though, I doubt Jens will be persuaded to make any large changes to his design. Also, you'll never please everyone!

[kamelito]

If you put every single things that a user want, how can you do business after? You've to be incremental to have a sustainable business I suppose. Being incremental has also the advantage of letting people saving money for the next piece of intersting HW.
Kamelito

[spud]

Originally Posted by voxel

who sees that with all the remaining chips gone like that there is no way to repair the old REAL Amigas now ???

Yes there is, buy a motherboard from Jens and take the chips out of the sockets ;-)

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

How about doing it properly and replacing Lisa with an FPGA equivalent. Obviously you'd include a few minor enhancements like a flicker fixer, chunky mode and a 64 bit blitter to make full use of that faster CHIPRAM

seriously though, I doubt Jens will be persuaded to make any large changes to his design. Also, you'll never please everyone!

@NovaCoder if we'll see a Vampire board for the "reloaded" (btw, lots of ifs before we get there ;-)) it will probably be by the time the Apollo team has included a SuperAGA or RTG core into the FPGA and you'll get HDMI out that way.
Such a Vampire card would probably be the best complement to the Reloaded boarf...

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

seriously though, I doubt Jens will be persuaded to make any large changes to his design. Also, you'll never please everyone!

true, but the wiki entry admits the possibility of an A600-compatible form-factor (in consideration) so the design is not finalised yet.

i might be likely to buy one anyway though, and it would be a good excuse to make a new keyboard like i'd decided i would ages ago

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Akira

Not really, mixing it means I can't individually process the audio channels if I want to on an external mixer. It's not a good idea.

Of course you can. Think.

The only difference from now would be that you get a headphone jack which is amplified so you can actually hear anything, and with no 100% stereo separation to drive you crazy after 5 mins of music work. As I said, musicians would love it

[Mrs Beanbag]

Amiga stereo is really useless for music i suppose but stereo effects are still possible, i don't know of any games or software that uses it but still... at least have a switch or jumper. or just get this:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/35mm-stere...-adapter-fk15r

[pandy71]

All this sound strange - not sure why Jens is forced to buy old chips to create new boards if he can use own A-clone project and at the same time solve biggest issue i.e. limited CHIP bandwidth (from/to CPU).

[alexh]

I think that just confirms that Clone-A AGA either doesn't exist or (like the open source implementations) is full of bugs due to lack of documentation.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

true, but the wiki entry admits the possibility of an A600-compatible form-factor (in consideration) so the design is not finalised yet.

If I'm splashing out 200e on a new board, I'd like something that didn't exist before, like the fabled A600-AGA we are all dreaming about

So I hope that Jens will make that a reality

[Mrs Beanbag]

well it says it would be "nice to have" but is not a primary objective. But since the only thing stopping an A1200 mobo fitting in an A600 is the mouse/joystick ports, which could easily be replaced by headers and ribbon cables (which later revisions do for the first mouse port), unless Jens is planning to use that circuit board real-estate for something else i don't see why not.

yes. if it does more things than exist before that would be good. it's what it won't be able to do, out of the box, that an existing A1200 can do out of the box, that concerns me.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

if it does more things than exist before that would be good. it's what it won't be able to do, out of the box, that an existing A1200 can do out of the box, that concerns me.

I am worried about the same thing, considering its competing alternatives:

An original A1200 motherboard that costs less than 100 euros and works out of the box and is more flexible to expand.

A MiST Amiga clone, which costs about 200 euro but just runs out of the box.The FPGAArcade board which has much of the same advantages as the MiST and maybe some more (but it is currently in limbo status/two more weeks!).

And then you have to factor in the overall cost for the user (aproximate values):

AmigaReloaded 200 euro
Amiga case 20 euro
Amiga keyboard 15 euro
PC laptop PSU 10 euro
ACA accelerator 150 euro
Floppy drive 15 euro
VGA output ? euro

Which comes to a total of at least 410 euro for a fully working AmigaReloaded with no special expansions (like usb & scandoubler).

A fully working complete A1200 can be bought for 200 euro or less, and works out of the box.