NATAMI - Advance Amiga Compatible

[Hotshot]

http://www.natami.net/

The NatAmi Project
This hardware project is dedicated to the still innovative system architecture of the Commodore AMIGA computer.

The basic concept is straight: Get the original Amiga design up-to-date.

The NatAmi approach is to rebuild the original system

    * without emulation

    * without abstraction layers

    * without legacy drawbacks


This means the system needs to be built from scratch. It will not use standard PC components when their adaption or implementation causes workarounds wich limit preformance, functionality or usability. The priority is to build a very simple system design which is predictive, easy to use and fast responding like the amiga was/is.

The original creators put great effort and many thoughts into how to keep things simple. The NatAmi is intended to keep this guidline as the foundation of its system.

This concept is the project name: Native Amiga

The NatAmi does not revive or copy an A500/A4000. It will be a succeeding Amiga model not done by emulation - it is done by reconstruction. Up-to-date and good performing components are used to retain the efficiency. It will rely on the original philosophy - but remove old limitations.

The NatAmi is an AMIGA compatible machine, allowing you to natively run original Commodore Amiga software.


This is really interesting

[Jim]

I think it's a great idea.  It would be great to get an HDL description of all the custom chips.  I'd like a PCI Express Amiga card I could plug in my PC.

The really disappointing thing is the 68060 is only 75MHz, just 10x faster than the original A500, but they cost between $200 and $450US.  PC chips are 300x faster than an A500 just by clock speed, let alone design improvements.

<later>looks like they're trying to do a softcore 680x0 design, that would only be limited by FPGA clock speeds (200Mhz? max)

Jim

[va!n]

On the one site its a nice idea and big respect for getting it working! But on the other - welcome in real life - site i have to say its stil,l 15-20 years to late! I dont understand why ppl are trying again and again to produce an amiga like machine, with old and expenstive components like PPC and other things... Sure that all such experience failed for the mass market... Even they are to expensive and even when they are improved to the original amiga, it seems they cant reach the power of a low cost PC today... At least even when such a machine would not be to expensive... What to do with such a machine when you cant use standard PC monitors (without scandoubler), no real new (comercial) professional software like PhotoShop and a lot other great tools you can find on the PC as freeware, shareware, comercial... Why run old 320x200 LoRes games or just play a hand full of new games, when you can have such quality games on PC as freeware / flash / comercial?

Ideas are nice but personally i would not spend even 1 cent nor 1 minute into such a few-computer market. Amiga and its OS was nice... but you cant compare it with todays OS and its powerfull hardware! Personally i loved Amiga like hell and i will never forget the great times with it (same for C64)... but i will never again miss my actual PC hardware and Windows 7 as OS.

[Shockwave]

The idea of a 75mhz Amiga makes me happy.

Actually this is something I wouldn't have bothered with before, after all there are a truckload of second hand Amigas out there for cheap prices if you want to code on the original platform.

There is appeal for a new platform, an amiga with 10X the power would be great, and I am actually looking around for a fixed platform to program on.

If enough people took this up I might actually be tempted to buy one.

[Moroboshisan]

The idea of a 75mhz Amiga makes me happy.

the idea of a NEW amiga, binary compatible with KS 1.3 / 2.0 / 3.1 would be great... but Natami project progress are really SLOW... I simply prefer the real thing to run dems and stuff... so I don't actually like the idea of a new OVEPRICED amiga with not that much improvments over the real one...

Do not take me for the word, I would like to see the Amiga OS ported over the mainstream HARDWARE... I know, this is a religion war and I really don't want to be flamed by AmigaOne / Minimig / PegasOS / AmigaOS 4.x fans... all of this projects are cool, really... but all of them look TOO overpriced to me.
(available platforms today are: Minimig, SamEP440 http://www.vesalia.de/e_sam440epflex%5B6481%5D.htm  or Efika with WarpOS)

I'm asking myself: "why bothering with embedded and/or obsolete hardware? this is a niche product market... Someone started AROS more than 12 years ago, why not put all the efforts on this product?"

The drawback in AROS (AFAIC) is that developers tend to put too much efforts on adding new features instead of fixing core components or porting new hardware drivers. Actually I don't really need a new linux-based live CD or similar... I just want to see a NATIVE PORT of the amiga over the x86 (32b and/or 64b ... but, hey... why not 128b? Big"M" seems to have a planned roadmap with 128b on the line scheduled for Windows8 in 2012!), and we're still stuck in the EMULATION one-way to nowhere... simply hilarious!

please... consider this a Rant...

</rant>