Amiga Clone Natami - Planned For Summer 2008

[alexh]

Originally Posted by frikilokooo

Although NatAmi would be very expensive an used A4000 can cost 1000 Euros and the A4000 is worse

An A4000 can cost £150 (€190) also.

It's only when you add a PPC accelerator and lots of cards the prices go up.

[cv643d]

Hey,, its summer now!

or did they mean late summer?

Im going on vacation two weeks from now, would be nice to get a suprise when I come back in june.

[Amiga1992]

What about Jens Schoenfeld Amiga in FPGA thing???

[Josh]

Originally Posted by cv643d

Hey,, its summer now!

or did they mean late summer?

I am sure it means the same like ColdFire and most other advertised stuff for Amiga - namely NEVER

But if the projekt should be really available in this life I would be agreeable surprised...


Cheers Josh

[@UAE]

2008-05-07 : Website updated, Forum section added.

Update on his web site

[rodi]

Hello,

I have one question for the Amiga Clone Natami : if i would buy a Natami computer later, the kickstart and the Workbench would be given with it or not ?

[Kristian95]

kickstart and workbench are still copyrighted and the guys making Natami don't have that copyright so the answer to that is: no.

[NovaCoder]

I guess they could always sell it with a copy of AmigaForever

[frikilokooo]

It seems that they are thinking about using another CPU no 68k.No way!it would not be an Amiga for me

http://www.natami.de/knowledge.php?b=4&note=34&z=cFWILb

[Hungry Horace]

hmm.. i hope they leave a slot to add your own. i'd strip an 020 out of an a1200 or something

it it isnt running 680x0 code on a 680x0 processor, it's just hardware-based emulation!

[Zetr0]

LOL,

Arguably using an 060 is hardware based emulation. (of an 020)

[Hungry Horace]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

LOL,

Arguably using an 060 is hardware based emulation. (of an 020)

touché good sir!

[alexh]

Originally Posted by frikilokooo

It seems that they are thinking about using another CPU no 68k.No way!it would not be an Amiga for me

It doesnt matter cos they will almost certainly fail. This is not the first time people have tried to make coldfire for Amiga (and Atari for that matter). It's incompatibility with the core 68k and it's emulation software libraries of missing features lowers speed to below that of a 060 for lots of applications.

Great if the code can be recompiled / hacked to take out the problematic stuff, crap if it cannot.

The concensus was (last time I looked) that Amiga software relies too heavily on the missing features of the Coldfire.

Almost certainly why the Dragon1200 from Elbox was dumped. (Not to mention that by the time they were finished Freescale had already stopped making the Coldfire they chose )

I wish them all the best, a new pair of eyes might find something that the others overlooked.

[Oli_HD]

Originally Posted by alexh

(Not to mention that by the time they were finished Freescale had already stopped making the Coldfire they chose )

They picked the v4e (MCF5475 to be exact) which is still the fastest Coldfire around (266Mhz) and is very much still made.

Also looking at the way elbox designed it they added it as a second processor using the PCI bus as a bridge, meaning the 68K CPU would have still been used for none Coldfire software.

Mine is the one that was to tied in to the hardware. (Although even that, the older V4 Coldfire is very much still in production)

The main question regarding adding a Coldfire or PPC to the NatAmi on how its designed, the PPC's used on the Cyberstorm card only has one interrupt if Im correct (been a while since I read up on it) and the card has a register holding information on what irq was generated. The Coldfire only has four, but the old Amiga design uses all seven.
/rant

[Zetr0]

Originally Posted by Hungry Horace

touché good sir!

LOL i got lucky

[xc8]

Originally Posted by Akira

What about Jens Schoenfeld Amiga in FPGA thing???

heh

also, I like the "developer board" notice of the natami. it reminds me the "developer board" notice when i got the c-one (now serving as doorstop and recently was patched (using a soldering iron) again....)

also, regarding its price, i would prefer to see something functional and not a cost-reduced board like c-one or c64-dtv

[Samurai_Crow]

Update: They aren't looking into the Coldfire any more because it would be as much work to get it to run Amiga software as to get a new 68k core designed in hardware. The Dev board will be 68060-based while the consumer board will likely be based on a new 68000 core of their own design. The goal is to make a 200 MHz 68040.

[Charlie]

A new fast core based on the '040 instruction set would be the way to go.

Questions:
-How much work is this going to be for a small team that must already be swamped by the demands of this project, their obvious talent aside?
-Are there going of be difficult copy write issues?
-Why not use an off-the-shelf processor in combination with one of the available software emulation cores? Oh, yes that's been done hasn't it ..?

I'd love to see a new Classic Amiga:
-Updated chip-set.
-Modern connection options.
-Enough grunt to comfortably run basic desktop tasks.
-The ability to reconfigure for alternate "retro systems" would be nice.
I'd buy such a system...
...how's it going to be financially viable?
...I can do all of this, and more, by putting a x86 mobo into a retro case with the help of a little software. I've done it, Zetr0's done it. So have many others.
Still, I'll watch this one with much interest (and hope).

[Samurai_Crow]

From what I've gathered on the Natami forums, the developer box will come out first with a 68060 and FPGA-based version of the SuperAGA chipset. That way if there are still chipset bugs, they can be corrected in the FPGA. The cost for these developer systems will not be cheap though, look for $750 to $1000+ US currency.

The second version (tentatively planned) of the Natami will be available about a year later, and have an integrated 68ec040-compatible processor without an MMU. It will be a mass produced chip and have a targeted price of $100 USD each.

As for copyright issues, these will run AmigaOS 3.x and standard A1200/A4000 ROMs which can be obtained quite legally from Cloanto in their AmigaForever package.

[Yoto]

Great Natami project!
Does this means i can finally put my A1200 to rest?