Amiga Clone Natami - Planned For Summer 2008

[RedskullDC]

Hi Samurai_Crow, et al.

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Hi RedskullDC,

I think the main objection to using boards like the one you pointed out is that the Natami is designed to have 2 memory buses like the original classic Amigas with Chip RAM and Fast RAM although the CPU-card could have the Fast RAM on-board to simplify the design.

If you look closely at the latest pics, that is exactly what they have done

The 2 TSOP "ISSI" chips on the '060 board are RAMS of some kind.

Bit hard to tell on the baseboard (due to lores pics) but a couple of the BGA chips look like rams of some kind.

Makes sense for the baseboard to present a 14MHz (or 28 perhaps) synchronous bus, in the same way the 1200 does.
CPU card synchronises as required, but runs it's own ram at whatever speed it likes.
Same as virtually every accellerator card already out there for the Amiga (A3630/3640 two exceptions that come to mind).

----
Looking at the baseboard:

Pluses:
DVI/PCI ports are good.
ATA power connector.
PS/2 ports.

Minuses:
The IDE and Floppy ports on the baseboard are of dubious value, both ageing technology.
SATA would have been much preferrable.

No USB ports (that I can see?) Major negative...

No flames thanks, just my personal opionions...

Cheers,
Red

[lost_loven]

Read in the hardware section......so I think its also a plus!

http://www.natami.net/hardware.htm

evaluation Baseboard

* first board developed as NatAmi base and ONLY as NatAmi
* evaluation board to verify hardware and peripheral design concepts
* a short overview
* this board features the evaluation of:
o serial port, parallel port, ps/2 keyboard, ps/2 mouse, floppy disk, joystick ports
o 31kHz video out, 15kHz video out, 15kHz video in
o audio in, audio out
o SyncZorro, PCI, 2.5" IDE, 3.5" IDE
o simple (1.1) USB
o 128MB chip ram (max), 128MB fast ram (max)

lost

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by RedskullDC

Hi Samurai_Crow, et al.

If you look closely at the latest pics, that is exactly what they have done

The 2 TSOP "ISSI" chips on the '060 board are RAMS of some kind.

Bit hard to tell on the baseboard (due to lores pics) but a couple of the BGA chips look like rams of some kind.

Makes sense for the baseboard to present a 14MHz (or 28 perhaps) synchronous bus, in the same way the 1200 does.
CPU card synchronises as required, but runs it's own ram at whatever speed it likes.
Same as virtually every accellerator card already out there for the Amiga (A3630/3640 two exceptions that come to mind).

Those SRAMs on the '060 board are for debugging/software caching/local store purposes. What I meant was to have the DDR2 DRAMs on the CPU daughterboard.

Also, another goal of the Natami is to have a version of the core to work without any CPU daugterboard plugged in. That is their idea of cost-cutting, I think, which is why they have a CPLD as well as an FPGA on the baseboard. That's why they are working on the 68050 core to clock at an estimated 133 MHz.

BTW, the sync-zorro slot probably will clock a bit faster than 14MHz. I don't know what bus-speed they're looking at but to support a 200 MHz FPGA and an overclocked 99 MHz '060 CPU daughterboard they're going to need a faster bus speed. Their aim is for capability rather than backward compatibility.

Cheers,

--Sam

[ImmortalA1000]

What I would really like, and forgive me if this has nothing to do with Natami, is something that is essentially the graphics/audio improvement that Natami has, with backwards compatibility with all Amiga games (AGA,OCS, Wipeout PPC game) AND can run OS4.1 at speeds of approx PPC 604 @ 800mhz or so with 1gb of RAM.

This would be my ideal machine, simply because OS4 begs to be used as even today it is still superior to Win7 and OS X on Mac.

10s shutdown and reboot to full desktop and no hd thrashing/continued stealth loading of OS is impressive. As is installing things to a RAM drive which leave zero impact to your machine after reboot...javascript virus/trojan protection anyone?

[rhester72]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

This would be my ideal machine, simply because OS4 begs to be used as even today it is still superior to Win7 and OS X on Mac.

10s shutdown and reboot to full desktop and no hd thrashing/continued stealth loading of OS is impressive. As is installing things to a RAM drive which leave zero impact to your machine after reboot...javascript virus/trojan protection anyone?

With all due respect...no.

Sometimes we tend to lose sight of the fact that an operating system is a *utility* - merely a means of lauching _real_ apps and doing routine "housekeeping", nothing more.

There are various bells and whistles designed to make things load faster, look prettier, etc., but in the end, all that matters to me is the breadth and depth of the available software library...and like BeOS (which I considered architecturally vastly superior to Windows 95/98), the sad truth is that OS4 has no apps to speak of (certainly no "killer app") and will never have enough market penetration for anyone outside of niche hobbyist programmers and the independently wealthy to develop for.

It really is awesome that OS4 can be rebooted in ten seconds. Trouble is, once having done so...what then? See my point?

Rodney

[Retro-Nerd]

Great comment, Rodney. But don't post it in AOS4 forums.

[Paul_s]

who has entered in the tag 'summer 8002'. I will send a ship in a bottle to my family then and ask them to post in here what the hell happened!

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

What I would really like, and forgive me if this has nothing to do with Natami, is something that is essentially the graphics/audio improvement that Natami has, with backwards compatibility with all Amiga games (AGA,OCS, Wipeout PPC game) AND can run OS4.1 at speeds of approx PPC 604 @ 800mhz or so with 1gb of RAM.

Your goals cancel each other out. AmigaOS 4.1 has partial memory protection so it cannot ever possibly run WHDLoad and therefore requires an AmigaOS 3.9 dual-boot using the 68k processor or EUAE to get backward compatibility to hardware banging software of the past. The only possibility of getting anywhere near what you propose is if Hyperion-Entertainment releases a 68k version of OS 4+ for the Natami and similar Amiga clones.

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by rhester72

It really is awesome that OS4 can be rebooted in ten seconds. Trouble is, once having done so...what then? See my point?

Rodney

Very true... sad but much as we'd probably all love to have AOS back, it cannot compare to Windows/OSX/Linux for software base.

[radon_22]

Originally Posted by rhester72

It really is awesome that OS4 can be rebooted in ten seconds. Trouble is, once having done so...what then? See my point?Rodney

Well put. I think one of the reasons that we remember the AmigaOS so fondly is it had the "basic tools", and it allowed you to use several of them at once, something that was a pipe dream on other common systems at the time.

But the definition of "basic tools" has changed. Nowadays, a solid office suite, a modern browser, and drivers for common hardware (video, sound, printers, cameras, etc.) is a must. Oddly enough, these have been poorly represented in the Amiga world. It's a shame, really. I think an Amiga with a decent office suite (maybe a port of the newest Koffice or Open Office?) and a competent browser (current offerings are lacking) preconfigured out of the box and at a reasonable price would sell. As a very, very small niche market, but you don't have to have a huge slice of the pie to make money- it's a big pie.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by rhester72

With all due respect...no.

Sometimes we tend to lose sight of the fact that an operating system is a *utility* - merely a means of lauching _real_ apps and doing routine "housekeeping", nothing more.

There are various bells and whistles designed to make things load faster, look prettier, etc., but in the end, all that matters to me is the breadth and depth of the available software library...and like BeOS (which I considered architecturally vastly superior to Windows 95/98), the sad truth is that OS4 has no apps to speak of (certainly no "killer app") and will never have enough market penetration for anyone outside of niche hobbyist programmers and the independently wealthy to develop for.

It really is awesome that OS4 can be rebooted in ten seconds. Trouble is, once having done so...what then? See my point?

Rodney

sorry but I disagree. As a laptop engineer today's laptops in some ways are LESS powerful than a 5 year old Dell Latitude D810 simply because all people do with their computer is...

Surf the web
Watch movie files
Listen to music
Talk to others (MSN etc)
Photo related tasks
Go in chat rooms

etc etc.

So whilst the OS IS a tool, Windows is made by tools

I can't abide any kind of bad programming, and an OS on a machine with 2gb that chugs on virtual memory and randomly crashes is pathetic 25 years after the work of Dr Tim King.

The only other thing PCs do is gaming, and anyone with half a brain will own a 360 or PS3 for 1080p gaming already

As a tool OS4.1 IS superior to Windows...do I care that I need a Win XP laptop with a real GPU to play Battlefield 2? Not really....I'm willing to sacrifice

(try running 2005 copy of Battlefield on a new integrated intel graphics laptop with 3gb of ram and Core2duo and see how far you get)

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

Very true... sad but much as we'd probably all love to have AOS back, it cannot compare to Windows/OSX/Linux for software base.

Compare for what though? Apart from the activities I mention anything else is in a 5% minority anyway. There are only certain things a typical user needs to do, and even Google knows this but I can't talk anymore about that sorry due to NDAs.

This time is the first time since the 80s of multi home computer standards where you can use anything to get through the day and it can address the needs of 95% of the world's computer users. Windows is dead...it just didn't realise that codecs and flash/java killed it silently while it was counting its profits and made any OS redundant.

OS4 does all those activities I mentioned, perhaps Rodney's surname is Trotter

edit: WHDload isn't important to me @ whoever said that, a bonus but not essential. I never had HD installed games like 99% of Amiga owners worldwide so I'm not missing anything technically.

[Retro-Nerd]

Name 10 great AOS4 programmes for the daily PC work, which are better than their Windows, Linux or MacOS counterparts.

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Name 10 great AOS4 programmes for the daily PC work, which are better than their Windows, Linux or MacOS counterparts.

Maybe im wrong but I get the feeling your not a fan.

[asm1]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Name 10 great AOS4 programmes for the daily PC work, which are better than their Windows, Linux or MacOS counterparts.

ok

1) OS 4
2) OS 4
3) OS 4
4) OS 4
5) OS 4
6) OS 4
7) OS 4
8) OS 4
9) OS 4
10) OS 4

Thats about it. As I've said before, I can't see the point. Especially as the majority of "Amiga" users have a win/mac/ linux box to do productivity on. Even if I had a PPC card for my A1200 I would probably stick with OS 3.9 due to the availability of useable software.

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

Very true... sad but much as we'd probably all love to have AOS back, it cannot compare to Windows/OSX/Linux for software base.

AROS has a built in partial posix layer. If that was finished and there was, say, a GTK2 implementation, then AROS could share a lot of the standard apps like Firefox, OpenOffice etc.

Then the user's decisions would be based on the quality of the OS, and not the codebase.

(EDIT: Same applies to OS4, of course.)

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by asm1

ok

1) OS 4
2) OS 4
3) OS 4
4) OS 4
5) OS 4
6) OS 4
7) OS 4
8) OS 4
9) OS 4
10) OS 4

Thats about it. As I've said before, I can't see the point. Especially as the majority of "Amiga" users have a win/mac/ linux box to do productivity on. Even if I had a PPC card for my A1200 I would probably stick with OS 3.9 due to the availability of useable software.

So basically there arent any?

Decent browser? Photo editor? Word Processor? Spreadsheet? Game? HD Media Player?

You seem to be rather of the fan-boi ilk. I love my Amigas as much as most here but you've got to be realistic.

I even tried AROS and its fine as an OS but have you looked at the browser? All you'll do is boot it and reminisce (sp!?) but for real world use it will be OSX/Windows/Linux for 99.99% of us...

Its sad but true..

And Natami (coming back to topic) won't be a daily machine for most. Thats if it meets that Summer 2008 date
Now the i

[asm1]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

So basically there arent any?

Decent browser? Photo editor? Word Processor? Spreadsheet? Game? HD Media Player?

You seem to be rather of the fan-boi ilk. I love my Amigas as much as most here but you've got to be realistic.


but for real world use it will be OSX/Windows/Linux for 99.99% of us...

Methanoid, I beleive you have misunderstood the point / irony in my last post. I completely agree that AOS (in any form) is nowhere near Win/Mac Linux for everyday use. All I was intending was to highlight the naivete of the "But it runs OS4" argument, which many OS4 users cant seem to see beyond - of course it's nice, but when it comes to everyday stuff, the main basic apps are sadly lacking - basically there aren't any. In other words I was taking the pi$$.

As for my PPC on an A1200 - I meant that if I had a PPC cardI'd run AOS 3.9 for compatibility with the "classic" Amiga apps/utils/games. Nostalgia if you will - as that is the reason I got the machine in the first place. Whats the point of a new OS that wont run any of the old stuff ?

Of course I will probably get flamed for it, but I hope you see now that I'm certainly no fanboi. I do love my Amiga, and I beleive that new hardware is a good thing but there is really no "platform" beyond OS 3x..... I really cannot see the point of having an orphaned OS with no backward compatibility and no development beyond the "hobbyist" community - its just a cynical cash in by Hyperion (or whoever owns it) and X hardware company looking to flog 5 year old (or older) PC/Mac bits as a "new Amiga".

Of course there will be some people who will buy into it - good for them, but sadly I think their loyalty is misplaced.

If it were possible to run OS4 on x86 hardware, then I might be interested (and no I don't mean emulation) - its cheaper to buy than some new fangled exclusive "Amiga" Motherboard.

*sigh*

Andrew

[MazinKaesar]

Originally Posted by asm1

If it were possible to run OS4 on x86 hardware, then I might be interested (and no I don't mean emulation) - its cheaper to buy than some new fangled exclusive "Amiga" Motherboard.

Try Icaros Desktop!

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by MazinKaesar

Try Icaros Desktop!

I`ve never heard of this, downloading now