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A New Amiga Will Go On Sale In Late 2017 (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quote the Register:
The world's getting a new Amiga for Christmas. Yes, that Amiga -- the seminal Commodore microcomputers that brought mouse-driven GUIs plus slick and speedy graphics to the masses from 1985 to 1996... The platform died when Commodore went bankrupt, but enthusiasm for the Amiga persisted and various clones and efforts to preserve AmigaOS continue to this day. One such effort, from Apollo Accelerators, emerged last week: the company's forthcoming "Vampire V4" can work as a standalone Amiga or an accelerator for older Amigas... There's also 512MB of RAM, 40-and-44-pin FastIDE connectors, Ethernet, a pair of USB ports and MicroSD for storage [PDF]. Micro USB gets power to the board.
A school in Michigan used the same Amiga for 30 years. Whenever it broke, they actually phoned up the high school student who original set it up in 1987 and had him come over to fix it.
A school in Michigan used the same Amiga for 30 years. Whenever it broke, they actually phoned up the high school student who original set it up in 1987 and had him come over to fix it.
My 3rd computer was an Amiga back in the late 1980s. Good machine, had some really good concepts for the time, and it was great to learn programming on.
This approach is a recipe for failure.
One of the smartest people I know used to program emulators in FPGA. He programmed emulators for everything: TRS-80, TI-99/4A, Sinclair 1000, PDP-8, PDP-11, IBM zSeries, Cray, you name it. He eventually started doing contracts for major government contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc., and often for $200K to $600K a pop. He was very well respected in that community, and knew how to get around most of the problems inherent in FPGA emulation.
Anyways, he was paid to do a few contracts for Amiga computers, and had the most trouble with them. Apparently, their custom, decentralized architecture introduced severe "resolution artifacts" (his words, not mine) into any emulated FPGA bus. Another huge problem was something that had to do with feedback loops introduced by eddy currents caused by some of the FPGA parallelization circuits that came about due to optimization algorithms for the silicon etching process.
At the end of the day, he was very, very close to solving all of these problems, and he went outside to walk to the local 7-11 to get a Mountain Dew to refresh his energy. He crossed the wrong basketball court, however, and some local residents started getting into a beef with him, causing a lot of trouble. Those guys were clearly up to no good. End of story, his mother was afraid he'd get into more trouble in his neighborhood (after all, Philadelphia has one of the highest homicide rates in the country), so she sent him to live with his aunt in California. He took a cab to his aunt's house when he arrived at the airport, and was inspired by a pair of dice he saw hanging from the cabbie's review mirror. He thought to himself, "Life is a gamble, why waste time solving FPGA bus problems for antiquated architectures?" and gave it up in an instant. "Smell you later, dude!" he said, and sold all of his FPGA patents the next day.
It was a wonderful machine.
Great archictecture. I wrote "Spppaaaacee Acccce" (aka Space War) and got sued by Don Bluth for using the name (had no idea about the animated dragon's lair type game.
Loved the implementation of Mech Force . We had 3 people buy amigas just to play that game on the amiga.
Then it was ruined when ported to the PC as "Titans".
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The PDF says it will probably cost more than the current models, which go for ~$300 or more. Kind of expensive when you could easily get a modern PC for about the same price. I mean, it's not an absurd price, but definitely niche stuff.
Circumcision is child abuse.
The thing about Amiga owners is you can't get them to shut up about their Amiga. It's like the guy who doesn't have a TV, or the guy who rides a bike to work. We don't give a shit about your Amiga, dude.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The only stories we run on Amiga are about the release of a new computer. The comments then always boil down to the same thing:
a) My first computer was an Amiga
b) There's places where the original Amiga is still running
c) This company is a shell with nothing to do with the Amiga that made the Amiga great.
d) This product is too expensive and completely irrelevant.
e) This is a shameless Slashvertisement and is about the only Amiga related stories that gets run here anymore.
This post is in line with e.
How is that different from Linux users?
So what exactly is this based on? The original Amiga was a Mot 68k, then it was ported, iirc, to the PowerPC. So has it moved to ARM now, or x86? Also, is the OS still a 16-bit one, or is it now 64-bit? I read the PDF: what instruction set does the Altera cyclone follow? I do think it's neat that they've put this all on an FPGA: hopefully, that'll help make this device somewhat competitive.
If PC's or Mac's went away I'm sure they'd have it. Amiga's are only getting this "support" because it's effectively a dead platform.
PC's and Mac's don't just have support - they still have active hardware and software development after more than 30 years . . .
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I loved my Amiga, but now it's time for me to put aside childish things...
I think the point the AC was making was that people are still enthused about a computer that came out in 1985. (ish?) I still have my Amiga I bought used with the 512K expansion pack (with the battery removed of course.) Lots of overtime at the local car dealership washing cars for that one. :)
There is no such enthusiasm for the 8088's. Most of the support those old behemoths get are from the sheer number of them rotting in storage buildings and at the local Goodwill. The Amiga's like a vintage automobile. It's got a loyal following, a bunch of 3rd party support and enthusiasts, and a wealth of games and apps that were truly ahead of their time. Thanks to Commodore's board, the Amiga died prematurely, IMHO.
I admit, I only use Amiga through emulation these days, but I did all my college work on my A500 up until I found Slackware Linux my senior year. :)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
I had an Amiga back in the day. It was great.
But a modern version is pointless. AmigaOS - even the latest version - is hopelessly outdated. And what Amiga software is out there that anyone would actually want to use? Besides games? Which can be emulated *perfectly* on a $50 Raspberry Pi?
The bowling alley here in town still uses a few Amigas to keep the score for each lane. I'm not entirely sure how it works or exactly what it does (since I don't know anything about bowling), but the machines somehow track the scores and post them on monitors over each lane.
The owner told me once that he has a whole pile of Amigas for spare parts in the back.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
But this "new" Amiga is still an emulator. The only difference is that the simulation algorithm runs in an FPGA, not a CPU.
One is a PPC machine which run emulated 68k code too and is very expensive whereas the other is "just" the fastest most modern 68k Amiga around in a pretty cheap package. Atleast as far as just the vampire cards go.
You have a point, the Amiga wore the crown in a time when there were many different computer brands, and they were all being thinned out. Only a few were able to survive that, and even Apple had trouble against the PC.
Look at it another way, though. There was enough room in the market for another OS (Linux), so why not for another hardware platform as well? Perhaps difficult, but it seems like it would have been possible.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is one of the most exciting devices to come out of Amiga land in a long time. What this new hardware and core is doing is bringing back to life the Classic 68k CPU, and the Amiga hardware chip-set. To give everyone an idea what they are planning (this info taken from various postings):
1) Apollo Core 68080 is not only the fastest 68000 series CPU ever, it also is the most fully featured and compatible (even fixing old 68k bugs). It includes technologies from newer CPU's such as AMMX (AMMX is the 68k version of the MMX instruction set from INTEL), 64-bit support, Super Scalar Pipelined FPU, etc... See this page for full info: http://www.apollo-core.com/ind...
2) This integrates (through compatibility) and expands on the original Amiga chip-set (OCS/ECS/AGA etc..). They are expanding the original chip-set forward with things like SAGA and PAMELA (PAULA 2.0). PAMELA basically gives you now what "AAA" (future Amiga chip set planned right before Commodore went bust) wanted to give us, like 8 channel - 8bit or 16bit samples * 6bit Volume = 22Bit AUDIO (internal calculation done in 24bit). SAGA combines the original AMIGA AGA chip-set with wanted features like 8-bit Chunky, 15-bit Chunky, 16-bit Chunky, 24-bit Chunky, 32-bit Chunky, and SAGA offers even more. The COPPER can control all these modes in real AMIGA style. SAGA output is over a modern HDMI connection (so all the original software will display on a HDMI monitor).
3) The Vampire V4 hardware is planned to eventually come out in 3 versions: Standalone (no original Amiga required), Amiga 1000/500/2000/CDTV add-on, Amiga 600 add-on, and Amiga 1200 add-on. So you can expand your old Amiga's or go with the standalone. This will bring all those systems to a level playing ground. The crazy thing is that this could allow for example an Amiga 500 to support AGA, which was in the Amiga 1200, and display this on a HDMI monitor.
So basically what they are doing is taking the Classic Amiga CPU/FPU (680x0) and custom chip-set (OCS/ECS/AGA etc..), and put it on a programmable chip (FPGA). Having it on the FPGA they can update things with new features and optimizations over time. Not only is the goal to be mostly completely compatible with the original Amiga chip-set, but to also make it better. This means old existing software will work, or developers can improve their software by using the modern feature sets that are added to the FPGA (such as AMMX for multimedia processing, or improved Audio with Pamela). They chose the FPGA they did for the price to performance (didn't want this version of the board costing too much) aspect. Of course a FPGA is slower then a ASIC, but it allows them to upgrade and improve things over time which is a big plus. The big issue with your given FPGA over time will be how much it can hold space wise as more things are added. So that would be one reason to upgrade to another FPGA over time (besides speed improvements).
In the VAMPIRE V4 they are expecting performance of around what would be a 240-300 MMz 68060. If they went with a more expensive FPGA (ARRIA 10) they would expect performance of a 500-600 MHz 68060, which running at that speed would be faster than a top speed 5GHz PC running WINUAE (emulated). So using a guessimate, you can guess the FPGA they are using (Cyclone V) would run at half the speed of a ARRIA 10, which would be like running WINUAE (Amiga emulator) on a 2.5 GHZ PC (these are all gusessimate numbers as stated). This is not bad if given another guessimate the standalone Vampire V4 costs $400 or so. So price wise this can be more affordable then other Amiga solutions (standalone or add-on expansion) given what it offers. Of course because they are producing in lower quantities prices will be higher then common off the shelf hardware. If this thing ever could sell in large quantities (which is doubtful since it caters to mostly old Amiga users), they could even put it into a ASIC (non-programmable CPU like Intel, AMD, and ARM) rathe
If he weren't still a student, they wouldn't be able to force him to fix things for them. So he was being kept back the whole time. Ingenious, really.
Ezekiel 23:20
Now I can finally use all those Amiga floppies I've been hording over the last two decades.
Rots of ruck. Probably many of them will be unreadable due to C='s overambitious floppy format.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A Mac will absolutely have 30 weeks of tech su... oh wait, 30 years? Yeah, good luck with that.
Apple doesn't even put a decent, normal amount of RAM in their computers now and even removed the memory slots so we can upgrade them ourselves. It's either pay upfront at the beginning for more RAM or buy something that won't even last three years.
#DeleteFacebook
We also got a third hardware platform today, its main features are: small and low cost. The Raspberry Pi. It's no Intel or AMD but it's powerful enough for normal every day use.
#DeleteFacebook
And shouldn't Half-Life 3 be called Life 1.5?
#DeleteFacebook
Have you tried a software emulator? Modern machines are easily powerful enough to emulate it accurately at full speed without glitches. For 8 bit machines like the BBC Model B there is even a full speed emulator in javasscript that runs in a webpage. This even plays the tape and disk sounds when loading! When you have several orders of magnitude more computing power you don't need hardware emulation to provide an amazingly accurate simulation.
I vividly remember going to the library and bookstores every day after school in hopes of getting the latest computer magazine that might have one more bit of technical detail on the blitter chip.
This AC gets it!
#DeleteFacebook
It would be like an army of gurus, all meditating at the same time!
A true Amiga fan gets that ;P
The games can run 100% accurately at full speed and still have latency. Latency means how quickly the output of the program reacts to the input, not how fast the program runs. Emulators will typically add several frames of latency. It's not all even the emulators' fault, audio buffers, USB polling speed, frame buffers, LCD display all contribute to latency. Old hardware typically didn't have the memory for audio or video buffering so trading latency for quality wasn't even an option.
This video demonstrates the latency difference between a NES game running on retro pie and real hardware. Real hardware even running at 50Hz instead of 60Hz is so fast to react that it feels like the jump started before the button was even pushed!
If you play virtual instruments with a MIDI keyboard you can sensitize yourself to (at least audio) latency by increasing and decreasing the audio buffer size and using voices with very fast attack. Huge difference between how it feels to play with 512 and 64 samples even though it's "only" 10 milliseconds.