Quote:
Originally Posted by wXR
Guys, can we make this vision a reality? We have A1200.net producing cases, keycaps, and soon the keyboard mechanisms themselves. We have the Apollo team opening up the SAGA core, and some real movement in the world of AROS68K. Why can't we just put all of these together and make a new "classic" Amiga? It seems like the opportunity is just sitting there.
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Fixing the AmigaOS situation is just the first obstacle. I have been saying for a long time that it doesn't get you very far unless you have a plan to fix later obstacles. It is new affordable Amiga hardware which would drive demand and development of the AmigaOS and software.
1) Make AmigaOS/AROS available, usable and upgradable (restart 68k AmigaOS development or enhance 68k AROS).
2) Use FPGA hardware to make the 68k CPU and custom hardware available, usable and upgradable.
3) Make a 68k ASIC and use an FPGA for the custom hardware.
4) Make a 68k+custom hardware single chip Amiga SoC ASIC.
This was my vision several years ago and I tried to make it happen. There were other important obstacles which needed addressing.
1) 68k compiler support and code generation quality needs to improve
2) An FPGA 68k CPU needs to be fairly optimal, advanced, organized and upgradable.
3) 68k and AmigaOS standards need to be created (Development and Standards Committees)
4) money needs to be raised and partners found
5) products need to be designed and marketed
I worked on 1 above choosing to improve vbcc. I was partially successful in improving 68k compiler support but was mostly unsuccessful at improving code generation quality significantly. For 2 and 3 above, I helped with the Apollo Core guys giving many suggestions for improvements, programmed some 68k statistics gathering software and benchmarks and documented team proposals for an enhanced ISA. I consider my Apollo work a complete failure though as Gunnar decided to hyper-optimize for an FPGA and abandoned the enhanced ISA completely. As far as 4 above, I was already talking to some investors and doing some investigation for them which I myself lost contact after I decided Gunnar was unreasonable. I made first contact with a potential embedded and ASIC partner which went pretty well but there were too many loose ends (uncertainty is risk) to get very far. I never really made it to the marketing part but suggested some ideas on forums and have talked to Matthew@A-Eon suggesting restarting 68k AmigaOS development and improving APIs to be more compatible to AmigaOS 4 to ease development and create a larger market. I suppose I failed here also. Amiga has a way of turning dreams into nightmares. You would save a lot of time and money if you forgot any Amiga visions you had. Sorry, that is the reality of the current Amiga situation.