Amiga Clone Natami - Planned For Summer 2008

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Computolio

The prototype is utterly crazy. It basically looks like a C-One with a 68030 jammed into it.

It is.

Hello fellow Amiga users,

A friend has pointed me to you site as you seem to have some questions about the Natami project which I might be able to answer.

I'm the first time here so maybe it makes sense to introduce myself.
My name is Gunnar, on my private page you can see some of the things which I did in the last years. www.greyhound-data.com/gunnar/

To your questions about the Natami
On the natami homepage www.natami.net you should be able to find many answers.

Thomas Hirsch, is the brain behind the project.
Thomas makes a living a HW designer since many years. Most of his HW work is build into Telekom equipment or cars (he did quite a lot for German T-Kom and for Daimler-Benz).
Some of you might have seen AMIGA stuff that Thomas did.
For example he did the real HD-floppy for the A1200.


Thomas is working at the Natami since 5 years now.
It was a long route but now the Natami is on the finish stretch is its getting quite exiting.

Thomas did show case the Natami at the Amiga Meeting in Karlsruhe University this January. About a hundred (ex)Amiga users have seen the machine there.

I have to admit I got very enthusiastic after seeing the Natami Prototype.
Thomas is now working on the Natami60 developer system.
These system are going to be realized this summer.

Some developers have joined the Natami dev team already.
I'm keen on developing a few games for it.
You might have already seen screenshots of the first 3D flight game for the Natami that I did.



I hope these answer help you.
If you have more questions please ask them here or write them to the contact page on the natami side.


Cheers
Gunnar

[rave]

I NEED one!!!!

[jrom]

Gunnar: what about the question from galahad ... is it going to have more than 4 audio channels?

[frikilokooo]

@bigGun

It sounds too much well to be truth.

What is known of their external appearance?,will it have plastic case?,mounted in tower or desktop?,small size or normal?

BTW your shoot'em up is very nice! I hope that your editor is for creating other genres too.

[DDNI]

NATAMI is featured in this weeks Micro Mart...

[Zetr0]

@DDNI

looks like i am going to pickup a micro mart this week, wow haven't done that in a few years!!!

@bigGun

I have been reading with much interest the HUGE Natami Thread on Amigaworld.net,

so how does one get on the DEV team, and howmuch is a Dev board ?

[DDNI]

an A1200 with 68030 board was given away in last weeks Micro Mart classifieds!

[alexh]

Who here reckons that a Devboard with be a C-One with addons?

[Zetr0]

@Alexh

I suppose it gives me a reason to finally get a C-One then LOL

[Deaths_Head]

well i'm looking forward to this can't wait hope its real. wonder what form factor it'll be. be cool to transplant it into a1200 case.

[paranoid]

Might make for an interesting demo machine.. Beefed up hardware, but yet consistent (unlike, say, PC demos that have varying degrees of requirements).

[Deaths_Head]

The natami sounds cool, wondering if it would be possible to configure it as an enhanced cd32 using the CD32 rom

[alexh]

I think you have to consider more fundamental things first... like if it's real?

And if it is...how many £100's will it eventually cost

[jmmijo]

@alexh, are you giving and over/under on the odds

[NovaCoder]

It's a very interesting project but I do have a few doubts about it's viability. To actually create a 2008 version of the AGA HW circa 1994 would cost crazy money

I think that the only way something like this could be ‘successful’ is with some big marketing and development money behind it.

Natami is obviously retro HW and should be marketed as such; it makes no sense trying to market it as the 2008 equivalent of the ‘classic’ HW.

It’s a real shame that this kind of cool HW update wasn’t released 10 years ago when it would have sold very well.

Probably the best way to sell it for the least amount of investment would be as direct replacement 1200/4000 motherboards that you could just wack into your existing case.

Maybe if it was an officially endorsed and supported Amiga Inc product in a nice (updated) but still retro 1200 case that would sell ok (eg slimmed-down, built in CD drive).....from what I heard though, they have a few issues with marketing products.

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Probably the best way to sell it for the least amount of investment would be as direct replacement 1200/4000 motherboards that you could just wack into your existing case.

Maybe if it was an officially endorsed and supported Amiga Inc product

One way to ensure that no one buys it is too put an "Amiga Inc" badge on it!

[Dexther]

I hope that the project to succeed.
The problems listed above I do not import.
Surely this better and that minimig.

[frikilokooo]

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

[alexh]

Originally Posted by jmmijo

@alexh, are you giving and over/under on the odds

I think they have a couple of Maverick coders on the team, but to me, it looks like little or no marketing or sales experience and no cash.

They might make the best Amiga ever, but if it costs £500+ then few will buy it. Just as very few bought the C-one, Pegasus, Amiga-One etc.

To be successful they need to clamp costs vs features and work towards a final price that is acceptable. They need to find a sponsor, look big, approach people like Google, Yahoo, M$, Apple etc. Their "reconfigurable computer" would be a cheap tax right off to most big companies.

The MiniMig is a good example; at it's current price and it's current features it is not viable for most users. Poor ACube must not have the money or ability to cost reduce the design and improve features.

Which is a shame because it's sooo close to viable. If it had 6.5Mbytes of RAM and hard drive emulation even at it's current price it would look attractive to an A500/A600!