Amiga on a PCI card

[Shrub]

Did this ever get released?

I remember seeing an 68040 based Amiga chipset on a PCI card a few years back. Is the card available, and is it being sold at a decent price?

[DJBase]

No, was never available.

[amigauser]

Originally Posted by Shrub

Did this ever get released?

I remember seeing an 68040 based Amiga chipset on a PCI card a few years back. Is the card available, and is it being sold at a decent price?

Is this what you were thinking of?

http://amiga.emugaming.com/inside.html

[keropi]

I wish someone would release an amiga on a pci card, just like those pci/isa industrial pc's... that would rock hard....

[Shrub]

Originally Posted by amigauser

Is this what you were thinking of?

http://amiga.emugaming.com/inside.html

Yep, that's the one. Cheers. Would have been great if it was released back then. Even a 68020 based board would have done nicely if it meant a more reasonable price. I don't suppose it's needed anymore with UAE and all that though, riight?

[alexh]

As a hardware engineer, I did think of starting an open source Amiga hardware project. Re-creating the Amiga chips in synthesisable VHDL that could be synthesised into FPGA's.

I got as far as converting the A500 PCB into a VHDL schematic top-level. Created a working 68000 synthesisable core and then gave up.

It's a lot of work and there are not enough hardware engineers interested in this kind of thing.

Although the C64 direct-2-tv thing did make a nice tidy sum of money... but they did have licenses.

Mick Tinker, the Boxer creator was supposed to have created an AGA chipset in VHDL for FPGA's for the Boxer, making improvements towards AAA. However I doubt that work will ever become available... which is a great loss... so many man hours

[keropi]

I remember reading that also the WALKER motherboard, was a redesigned 1200, but due to redesign, the AGA chipset was 2-3 times faster than the original, and still using the same 020/14 ...

[alexh]

I dont think that is true. Walker didnt even have an 020

http://www.blachford.info/computer/walker/walker.html

[keropi]

so it had a 030EC.... now that I remember, the AGA chipset on the walker was on a single chip, hence the speed increase...

[Shrub]

I remember the Walker. It was an ugly machine, almost as ugly as the N64.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by keropi

now that I remember, the AGA chipset on the walker was on a single chip, hence the speed increase...

Not true... take a look at the photos of the motherboard on this page

http://www.blachford.info/computer/w...er_inside.html

You'll see Walker had the STANDARD separate A1200 AGA chips.

# GAYLE - 391424-02, AA-GAYLE-R5, (CSG)
# ALICE - 391010-01, 8374-ALICE, AMIGA TECH, (?)
# BUDGIE - 391425-01, BUDGIE REV 0, (VLSI)
# LISA - 391227-01, 1XS6-LISA, (HP)
# PAULA - 391077-01, 8364R7PL, (CSG)

The only *real* thing that had any accelerated Amiga chipset (to my knowledge) was the BoXer2 created by Mick Tinker.

http://amiga.emugaming.com/boxer.html

With the death of Commodore, supplies of AGA chips had dried up and so worrying about the future of his as yet unreleased Amiga Motherboard replacement Mick reversed engineered the AGA chips, at the same time removing some limitations, such as chip RAM and DMA. Of course he couldnt afford "real" chips and it was realised using an expensive FPGA.

Access Innovations (Mick Tinkers company) who created the BoXer also created the Amiga Siamese PCI card that also was never released.

[keropi]

ah, so it was the boxer.... boxer - walker... I got confused

[Unknown_K]

When do the patents on the AGA and other chips run out? Once the patents are expired I am sure somebody could make a custom chip with all of them onboard and produce a cheap Amiga on PCI card. Ofcourse by that time nobody would want to buy one unless it was dirt cheap.

[keropi]

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showha....cgi?HARDID=41

[Methanoid]

I exchanged some emails with Mick Tinker. Basically he gave up as the hardware vas virtually done but there was no s/w from Paul Nolan (of Photogenics fame) to do the interface with PC hardware (the card uses the PC's VGA card as a display).

Personally I think it would have been a great piece of kit. But times move on and now with a fast PC and WinUAE you can get 040 speeds so whats the point (OK, 060 maybe).... Maybe if it had a Coldfire and patches like Oxypatcher etc it would be interesting....

Still, if someone made one I'd rather have real hardware rather than emulation inside my PC...

[keropi]

yep, nothing beats the real thing...

[Unknown_K]

The point would be that you can run anything the real amiga can run without messing with an emulater screen for each app/game

Emulating is fine if you never used the real thing. Have you ever played battlezone in the arcade and then played it on an emulater? Its not the same. if you were not old enough to experience the real thing then you don't have a frame of reference as to what the game as originaly sold was like to know if the emulated version is 100% or not (let alone as fun to play without the original video/controls).

[Shrub]

Another bonus is that you're using less of the PC's resources, so you can have the PC doing something in the background while you're using Amiga software. If the Amiga PCI card had some sort of video output too you'd essentially have a Siemese system

[RetroMan]

How about the Access -> http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showha....cgi?HARDID=39

Not a PCI Card, but it fits well in any PC Tower

[Shrub]

I found the Access (not actually named but it's the a 5.25" slot) mentioned on a forum posted at the end of 2004. The price they were charging for it was $1000 Canadian. That's the most expensive ISA and LAN enabled, stock (almost) A1200 I've seen lol. It looks good, though.

Actually, how can it be 2.3 times faster than an average A1200 when it's using the same CPU - does it mean with the optional 68030 or is it using a more efficient version of the AGA chipset?

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