That's very fully featured! I see it's a 2014 design - I wonder if it's been successfully built? (It uses an Altera EP3C25 with 24k logic elements and 66kbyte of embedded RAM, has a 32-bit wide 256 Mbyte SDRAM, and 5V tolerant I/O. Has a 50MHz Cortex-M4 ARM chip providing USB-OTG. Has a VGA connector (but no HDMI!) I gather that SDRAM is a bit difficult to work with, but hopefully the Altera toolchain has IP to do the interfacing.
Ed S yeah, it looks good on paper for the kind of projects we'd be interested in in the vintage computing communities which was why I posted it, but I haven't had time to follow up and see how far it's gotten, availability, etc.
Ed S for FPGA development that looks like it has huge bang for the buck, however it doesn't seem to have enough peripheral (or RAM) support to build a full on working emulated system. It seems more like an FPGA dev board.
Well, it is! But it has HDMI and audio and SD card connectors. And lots of I/O to hook up to keyboard and other ports. It has a USB device port, but no host port, no network interface. 32MByte of RAM is enough to get up to Amiga levels of performance, in fact isn't it enough for any retro machine? It's twice as much as my first PC! As it turns out, I meant to link to this other, cheaper board. $45: numato.com - Mimas V2 Spartan 6 FPGA Development Board with DDR SDRAM It has VGA but not HDMI.
Ed S I don't think HDMI output is a showstopper given the very cheap availability of VGA->HDMI converters, and I'm guessing anyone interested in vintage emulation probably has a few VGA capable monitors anyway. The RAM and peripheral interfaces are another issue though. I can't help thinking 32MB just won't be enough once you get everything up and running. I dunno, maybe I'm just getting jaded in my old age having a PC with 32GB of RAM. But my best Amiga back in the day still had 160MB of RAM AFAIR. I think most people think of vintage emulation as being strictly for vintage gaming, where yes 32MB would be plenty. But if you want to do more with it you'd probably want more. Anyway, with the advent of cheap(er) FPGA options and the inspiration of groups like the Vampire team, it's looking like a good time to be a vintage enthusiast.
160MB in an Amiga? Maybe that was a hard drive? These days an SDcard of 16G wouldn't be unusual. But for RAM, the A500 started at 512k, and could be expanded somewhat, but it looks like 8MB was an architectural maximum
Agreed though, it's a good time for retro, and FPGAs more or less mean you can make whatever chip or chipset you know how to describe.
Ed S no, the hard drive in that machine was a stunning 1 GIGABYTE! There was 128MB of RAM on the WarpEngine, 16+2 on the motherboard, and another 14MB on various expansion cards.
Any Amiga with a 32bit processor was capable of addressing several GB of RAM, though most maxed out at 16+2MB on the motherboard and 128MB on the CPU slot, but up to a GB on the Zorro-III bus. I even had an A500 with 18MB of RAM. 8MB on the expansion port along with a HD controller, 8MB more on an internal accelerator board and 2MB chip on a DKB MegaChip.
That said, I know 10-18MB was a more common limit for many Amiga users.
OK, that's a whole lot bigger than I expected! But even so, for me, one or two megabytes is enough for retro purposes. So 32 is loads! The real practical problem with the two boards I linked is that they have SDRAM, which is great for cache line refills but terrible for random byte accesses. There are boards with SRAM, fortunately, but no board seems to have all the right features for me.
Ed S IF we're talking about gaming use, then yes. 4-8MB FAST RAM and 1-2MB CHIP RAM is about all you need for 95% of Amiga games. BUT for people that are using their Amiga's for more than games. Like Internet, e-mail, web, IRC, music production, 3D rendering, apps like Pagestream, etc. It's like any other modern computer. The more the better. I really believe that there are people out there that would nearly kill for an Amiga expansion device like the Vampire but with 512MB or more of RAM.
Meanwhile though, I think addressing the gamer market with one of these inexpensive FPGA kits might allow a developer to sell enough to afford to design such a productivity oriented board later.
Interesting implication: the more retro you are, the easier and cheaper emulation is going to be! One of the interesting things I'm playing with is an emulation of a 16032 (or 32016) coprocessor for a BBC Micro. It has up to 15Mbyte of RAM, and can run HSPICE, the circuit simulator, which quite possibly is how it was used, back in the day, at Acorn, to help design the first ARM. That's as big a machine as I need to worry about!
That led me to this, which seems interesting - presumably not a fully open design but open enough for community projects: icomp.de - Turbo Chameleon 64
Ed S Yeah, the Chameleon is a cool but weird device. It's like several devices in one. A C=64 accelerator and drive emulator, an Amiga emulator, etc. Spendy but worth it to all the hardcore vintage Commodore people I know.
That's very fully featured! I see it's a 2014 design - I wonder if it's been successfully built? (It uses an Altera EP3C25 with 24k logic elements and 66kbyte of embedded RAM, has a 32-bit wide 256 Mbyte SDRAM, and 5V tolerant I/O. Has a 50MHz Cortex-M4 ARM chip providing USB-OTG. Has a VGA connector (but no HDMI!)
ReplyDeleteI gather that SDRAM is a bit difficult to work with, but hopefully the Altera toolchain has IP to do the interfacing.
Ed S yeah, it looks good on paper for the kind of projects we'd be interested in in the vintage computing communities which was why I posted it, but I haven't had time to follow up and see how far it's gotten, availability, etc.
ReplyDeleteI quite like the look of this one for $75
ReplyDeletescarabhardware.com - miniSpartan6+ with Spartan 6 LX 9
Ed S for FPGA development that looks like it has huge bang for the buck, however it doesn't seem to have enough peripheral (or RAM) support to build a full on working emulated system. It seems more like an FPGA dev board.
ReplyDeleteWell, it is! But it has HDMI and audio and SD card connectors. And lots of I/O to hook up to keyboard and other ports. It has a USB device port, but no host port, no network interface. 32MByte of RAM is enough to get up to Amiga levels of performance, in fact isn't it enough for any retro machine? It's twice as much as my first PC!
ReplyDeleteAs it turns out, I meant to link to this other, cheaper board. $45:
numato.com - Mimas V2 Spartan 6 FPGA Development Board with DDR SDRAM
It has VGA but not HDMI.
Ed S I don't think HDMI output is a showstopper given the very cheap availability of VGA->HDMI converters, and I'm guessing anyone interested in vintage emulation probably has a few VGA capable monitors anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe RAM and peripheral interfaces are another issue though. I can't help thinking 32MB just won't be enough once you get everything up and running. I dunno, maybe I'm just getting jaded in my old age having a PC with 32GB of RAM. But my best Amiga back in the day still had 160MB of RAM AFAIR.
I think most people think of vintage emulation as being strictly for vintage gaming, where yes 32MB would be plenty. But if you want to do more with it you'd probably want more.
Anyway, with the advent of cheap(er) FPGA options and the inspiration of groups like the Vampire team, it's looking like a good time to be a vintage enthusiast.
160MB in an Amiga? Maybe that was a hard drive? These days an SDcard of 16G wouldn't be unusual. But for RAM, the A500 started at 512k, and could be expanded somewhat, but it looks like 8MB was an architectural maximum
ReplyDeleteAgreed though, it's a good time for retro, and FPGAs more or less mean you can make whatever chip or chipset you know how to describe.
Ed S no, the hard drive in that machine was a stunning 1 GIGABYTE!
ReplyDeleteThere was 128MB of RAM on the WarpEngine, 16+2 on the motherboard, and another 14MB on various expansion cards.
Any Amiga with a 32bit processor was capable of addressing several GB of RAM, though most maxed out at 16+2MB on the motherboard and 128MB on the CPU slot, but up to a GB on the Zorro-III bus. I even had an A500 with 18MB of RAM. 8MB on the expansion port along with a HD controller, 8MB more on an internal accelerator board and 2MB chip on a DKB MegaChip.
That said, I know 10-18MB was a more common limit for many Amiga users.
OK, that's a whole lot bigger than I expected!
ReplyDeleteBut even so, for me, one or two megabytes is enough for retro purposes. So 32 is loads!
The real practical problem with the two boards I linked is that they have SDRAM, which is great for cache line refills but terrible for random byte accesses. There are boards with SRAM, fortunately, but no board seems to have all the right features for me.
Ed S IF we're talking about gaming use, then yes. 4-8MB FAST RAM and 1-2MB CHIP RAM is about all you need for 95% of Amiga games.
ReplyDeleteBUT for people that are using their Amiga's for more than games. Like Internet, e-mail, web, IRC, music production, 3D rendering, apps like Pagestream, etc. It's like any other modern computer. The more the better. I really believe that there are people out there that would nearly kill for an Amiga expansion device like the Vampire but with 512MB or more of RAM.
Meanwhile though, I think addressing the gamer market with one of these inexpensive FPGA kits might allow a developer to sell enough to afford to design such a productivity oriented board later.
Interesting implication: the more retro you are, the easier and cheaper emulation is going to be!
ReplyDeleteOne of the interesting things I'm playing with is an emulation of a 16032 (or 32016) coprocessor for a BBC Micro. It has up to 15Mbyte of RAM, and can run HSPICE, the circuit simulator, which quite possibly is how it was used, back in the day, at Acorn, to help design the first ARM.
That's as big a machine as I need to worry about!
Ed S I came across this today and thought you might find it interesting.
ReplyDeleteebay.ca - Details about Amiga 3000/ 4000 BigRAM 256 Mb
That led me to this, which seems interesting - presumably not a fully open design but open enough for community projects:
ReplyDeleteicomp.de - Turbo Chameleon 64
Ed S Yeah, the Chameleon is a cool but weird device. It's like several devices in one. A C=64 accelerator and drive emulator, an Amiga emulator, etc.
ReplyDeleteSpendy but worth it to all the hardcore vintage Commodore people I know.