A4000TX ATX Amiga motherboard

[b0lt-thrower]

Well I have to say with all of the recent developments in the Amiga world, this is probably one of the coolest if not the coolest. I could see myself buying a board to populate as availability of chips and time allowed. I would certainly do so if there was a PCI version available.

I mean, this board, with a Vampire card and some PCI slots would be that "Killer Amiga" I dreamed of so long ago - common hardware platform (ATX motherboard, PCI slots) and an "advanced" Amiga chipset. Mm-mm!

Even aside from the Vamp, it's still an amazing product/project and my hat is off to you. I know it's easy to be a "Monday morning quarterback," but I will also say: this is a design I had in the back of my head forever. Oh, no don't think I'm saying "Well I came up with this idea" - all I know about Electronics is never let the magic blue smoke out of the chips and don't touch the hot end of a soldering iron. I just thought for years "Why doesn't someone do an ATX Amiga motherboard, with sockets or spaces to xfer chips out of older machines, but otherwise with standard PC form factor layout...maybe since Prometheus is now open, include that as the bus-board in addition to or rather than Zorro..." and here we are!

I'm sorry, I'm rambling and offering no real insight into the thread so I'll step out and say (again) congratulations!

[Stedy]

@Hese



Well done on the mammoth task of re-tracking the A4000. You have more patience than I would have for a task like this.

For those talking about using the Prometheus design, I need to throw a small spanner in the works. The Altera EPM7000 CPLDs use in the design went obsolete last year. 5V tolerant CPLDs/FPGA are coming to the end of their life. The Xilinx XC95xx and Lattice Mach 4000 series are the only ones available and will be obsolete in 2-3 years.

I look forward to seeing pictures of the populated system.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Stedy

@Hese



Well done on the mammoth task of re-tracking the A4000. You have more patience than I would have for a task like this.

For those talking about using the Prometheus design, I need to throw a small spanner in the works. The Altera EPM7000 CPLDs use in the design went obsolete last year. 5V tolerant CPLDs/FPGA are coming to the end of their life. The Xilinx XC95xx and Lattice Mach 4000 series are the only ones available and will be obsolete in 2-3 years.

I look forward to seeing pictures of the populated system.

There was a post by Mr. Boehmer on A1k that he had redone the CPLDs on the Prometheus for some modern available chips. I don't have the post handy but with some searching maybe it could be found. Found it apparently the Prometheus II that he made some samples of used XC95144XL which seem to be available.

[spiff]

Congratulations! .

TBH I figured this would never go anywhere... will now go and eat that hat

[hese]

Originally Posted by Jope

Any consideration for adding more space between the fast slot and the rear of the machine? I can provide you with the footprint of the CSMK2 + CybSCSI2 if you like. :-)

That can be done but then I'm forced to move to EATX form factor. I think the current hybrid form factor would be ideal, giving the largest choice of ATX cases to choose from.

The next 2.0 revision needs some large rework to be done anyways to make room for more features, so I'll think about expanding this to a full EATX board.

[hese]

Originally Posted by Stedy

For those talking about using the Prometheus design, I need to throw a small spanner in the works. The Altera EPM7000 CPLDs use in the design went obsolete last year. 5V tolerant CPLDs/FPGA are coming to the end of their life. The Xilinx XC95xx and Lattice Mach 4000 series are the only ones available and will be obsolete in 2-3 years.

That is true. The plan is to convert the Prometheus code to some more modern chips when I have time.

[shaf]

Since most mid-towers support EATX it shouldn't cause any problems. I'd prefer an EATX Board myself so I could use a larger case to support all my SCSI devices.

[Jope]

Thanks, Hese!

I guess it's the modern display cards that have increased case sizes. :-)

[Juz400]

Would a set of riser pins where the Gary chip would go be benificial?
a small pcb with a Gary chip to drop into place or
a slightly larger pcb with a CPLD/FPGA with a Gary chip implemented on it with problems ironed out.

Maybe some day in the future a clever person(hopefully with a moustache and american accent) could fix whatever might need fixing.

If you have cards that reject the fix, use a gary image/chip that works for you.

I would like to read up more info on what problems there are.
this was interesting to read: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=48704

[hese]

Haven't had time to progress this much for the last few weeks, but here is a snapshot of the rev1.1 production board that I've been working on.


Support has been added for 2MB/4MB Kickstarts (Romy), PC floppy drives (Stedy) and some extra fans. No much space left so probably the rest of the features (PCI Mediator/Prometheus/both?, USB devices, more Fast RAM, ...) will be added to rev 2.0.

[1NOM155]

About the Prometheus or Elbox they are just bus converters (Zorro to PCI), probably the project for the Atari the CT60/63/60e idea will be a better solution but requires a lot of effort, like to implement a full 68060 CPU, by consequence removing the CPU slot, implement the briged between Amiga < MC68060 > PCI master IC etc, anyway anyone can have a look here http://powerphenix.com/ct60/english/welcome.htm.

About the usb, the project Thylacine, might be a good option to implement. To help you out please have a look of this project here http://members.iinet.com.au/~loofy/, you probably already know it.
Also I already tried to see if this https://www.microchip.com/wwwproduct...ional-features or similar IC can be used to upgrade it to usb 2.0, but again my knowleged is limited unfortunately.

Anyway I wish the best for your project mate.

With my best regards,

1NOM155

[jediknight]

be nice if you could actually buy one easyier

[1NOM155]

Originally Posted by jediknight

be nice if you could actually buy one easyier

Since this is in a development stage, I belive the newer revisions will be easy to get, or maybe send a PM to Hese asking for one. It will help him to know how many people are looking for a board

[AmigaHope]

What would be even more awesome is full-speed buffered/dual-ported CHIP RAM like Jens is doing with Amiga Reloaded. Requires some fancy bus arbitration, but modern RAM is so fast it would give a lot of overhead to work with. Then you could operate it in four modes (full speed all the time, full speed but blocked during "nasty" DMA mode only for software that sets nasty mode as a crude way of blocking the CPU, full speed but blocked during all AGA DMA slots, and compatibility "classic" mode).

[BYTEMAN]

I would like to know if production files will be publicly available?

[zero]

Am I the only one who still likes SCSI? I suppose SCSI controllers are even harder to find than IDE now.

But thinking about IDE controllers, how about SATA? Maybe there are some with an IDE emulation mode available.

[AmigaHope]

IMHO adding SATA is a bit much, best to leave functionality to expansion cards rather than cluttering up the motherboard even more.

Of course my wishlist for the motherboard would be for it to have 7 Zorro slots, not 4. My current A4000 has a 7-slot Zorro busboard and 6 of them are occupied. xD

[Juz400]

Originally Posted by zero

Am I the only one who still likes SCSI? I suppose SCSI controllers are even harder to find than IDE now.

But thinking about IDE controllers, how about SATA? Maybe there are some with an IDE emulation mode available.

Keeping up with SCSI would be expensive but worth it. The shear amount of Enterprise hardware that is scrapped every year is unreal.
I have scrapped over 250 U160/U320 SCSI HDD over the last few years, I didnt pay for them either! There are millions out there being scrapped every year.


I would`nt waste time on implementing SATA but SAS as it does both.


PCI Express - I have done a little research and it would be pretty difficult to get going and I think Vampire with its modern FPGA would be the only cost effective way of get it implemented.
The way the cards communicate with the host is pretty much a Networking protocol and you have to get all that translation working in Hardware to be fast enough to use.
Some Clever guys at CERN have got it going for the industrial VME bus
https://cds.cern.ch/record/2305653/files/tuapl03.pdf

[NorthWay]

Any chance a v1.1 or 1.2 could have an option for the AA3000 DSP chip? I am keeping a keen eye on the progress Matze is doing on his build...

[Pyromania]

How’s this project progressing in 2020? It looks very exciting.