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Casey Bakker
Netherlands
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Posts 20
03 Jan 2012 23:07
| Don't know if this is feasible or not: Does anyone in the team have access to an FPGA implementation of the C64? It would be a nice feature to have a C64 running in a screen/window under Amiga-OS. This way we could finally unite these two worlds and - as Amiga users - enjoy the many great games that exist for the C64. If we could do this in a similar way as Commodore did with the A-2088/Janus-SW combo, we could enjoyy the C64 without having to trade our favourite OS & workbench with a blue screen saying "38K basic bytes free.."
For example the C64 machine could be made to run in the Natami-FPGA and parse it's screen/audio output to a dedicated chunk of Natami memory where the "C64-Janus SW" could then convert it to an Amiga screen or window...
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Jakob Eriksson
Sweden
| | (Moderator)
Posts 1097
03 Jan 2012 23:17
| It is *possible* but VERY, VERY impractical, and time consuming to implement. Much easier to run a software emulator.
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3974
04 Jan 2012 00:43
| I proposed to use a very badly documented component which has to CIA chips and a 6502 chip integrated but it got shot down. ;)
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Ceti 331
United Kingdom
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Posts 282
04 Jan 2012 01:50
| i suppose with an FPGA you're just supped to program the whole thing to be what you want.
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Thierry Atheist
Canada
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Posts 1828
04 Jan 2012 01:53
| In the NatAmi ASIC (we'll get one eventually), we could wedge in there a 6502 that'll be both a C=64 and an Apple ][.... Hehehe!!!!
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3974
04 Jan 2012 02:30
| Thierry Atheist wrote:
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In the NatAmi ASIC (we'll get one eventually), we could wedge in there a 6502 that'll be both a C=64 and an Apple ][.... Hehehe!!!!
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you do not wanna do that it cost about a extra 5000 gates most of which would be needed for PLL's
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Nixus Minimax
Germany
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Posts 272
04 Jan 2012 07:41
| Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:
| you do not wanna do that it cost about a extra 5000 gates most of which would be needed for PLL's
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There should be quite a few clocks around already so presumably it wouldn't take much to set up another digital PLL. It certainly would be feasible but there simply is no point since you could always run frodo on the Natami. Nobody would be willing to spend the required development effort.
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Captain Nemo
USA
| | (Natami Team)
Posts 362
04 Jan 2012 09:07
| Wow, guess that you have never heard of Jeri Ellsworth! EXTERNAL LINK
Jeri & Limor Fried (Ladyada) are the two high-profile women engineers out there, who are FPGA evangelists. This video is very good:
EXTERNAL LINK
Here's Jeri's YouTube channel:
EXTERNAL LINK
LadyAda of Adafruit is here:
EXTERNAL LINK
Adafruit is very beginner-friendly, & has a lot of great stuff available all in one place. These women are awesome role-models. In a world where the Media tries to tell us that "Snookie" is the ideal, it makes me really happy that women like Jeri & Ladyada exist, and that they do their own thing.
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Olaf Schoenweiss
Germany
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Posts 782
04 Jan 2012 09:08
| there are good Emulators like VICE. Better to optimize the "Amiga-side" than to invest expensive resources (FPGA) for emulating.
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Casey R Williams
USA
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Posts 149
04 Jan 2012 20:52
| I am looking forward to 3D core and new 2d modes. I'd like a modern Amiga, not one containing every other old computer we could simply emulate. It's a neat idea, but explain how you would implement your (HW) C64 running in a screen in Natami. That sounds much easier to do with an emulator than with having an actual C64 on the FPGA. Even my USB-Natami idea would require a software component to run in a window on the desktop.
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Casey Bakker
Netherlands
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Posts 20
05 Jan 2012 21:05
| I'm also looking forward to having new features in Natami. At the same time I like having all the legacy SW at my fingertips (that's basically the point of having an Amiga compatible Natami-HW). [..explain how you would implement your (HW)C64 running in a screen in Natami..]
The idea is that the FPGA-HW-reimplementation would produce a digital image of the C64-screen in a chunk of the Amiga memory. Similarly, the (digital-) SID output would be translated to 8 bit PCM audio in another chunk of memory. A software component would parse the video and audio to the Amiga screen/ audio format..
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Ceti 331
United Kingdom
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Posts 282
07 Jan 2012 14:30
| imagine a sort of russian doll setup a modern machine, containing a legacy amiga, containing a c64..
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Chuck T
USA
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Posts 672
08 Jan 2012 01:50
| Captain Nemo wrote:
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Adafruit is very beginner-friendly, & has a lot of great stuff available all in one place.
These women are awesome role-models. In a world where the Media tries to tell us that "Snookie" is the ideal, it makes me really happy that women like Jeri & Ladyada exist, and that they do their own thing.
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They are beginner friendly but I've been told the Chumby Hacker board is not for beginners and I wanted to root the Beaglebone to run something other than Linux but that requires making your own memory map and understanding how all the chips in it work. I've emailed Texas Instruments for help and they said,"this is not our product" even though it has their chips in it. The manual for one of the chips is 3500 pages long and the table of contents is just 200 pages. I would have to use other assemblers to begin to program it. I've bought my own soldering irons at Radio Shack to learn they were too big to do through the hole soldering so I went to look at other models that might be small enough to do sufrace mount soldering as well. I've made mistakes trying to learn microcontrollers on my own... I've surveyed the different microcontroller companies and components over a two year period. All I can say is that Jerri and Lady Ada have professional schooling whereas most of us do not. I've looked at one of the ex-commodore engineer's background and have become intimidated at even approaching them. Most of these role models are professionals teaching us to use "toys" because the Arduino is basically a microcontroller running a bootloader. A bootloader makes something easy so it is like programming the Commodore 64 in Basic instead of Machine Code. Everyone learned Basic and fewer learned 65xx code. Without schooling, it is like asking, "What don't you know and how will you know it?" I can go out and buy some of the more advanced chips but I won't know where to learn how to use it and some microcontroller companies say their products come with a learning curve and you have to hit those books to use them. There needs to be more forums for teaching and there needs to be more teachers. One person for thousands of customers isn't going to do it.
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André Jernung
Sweden
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 988
08 Jan 2012 02:24
| The main purpose for Natami is to be a good Amiga clone. Adding unnecessary stuff might slow down the entire system design just because of one little "cool to have"-feature. Thus any addition must be very well thought through, and very well motivated. A C64 clone is not, in my opinion.
There are dedicated systems like C-One available if you want to replicate C64 behaviour. And good emulators on about every platform from the late 80's to today. If you want C64 in a box on Workbench, you can use a TV capture card for the same effect.
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Jens Drößler
Germany
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Posts 136
08 Jan 2012 05:46
| Or buy a Chameleon, this thing is getting better and better.
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Ceti 331
United Kingdom
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Posts 282
08 Jan 2012 13:10
| Jens Drößler wrote:
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Or buy a Chameleon, this thing is getting better and better.
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There's already a natami-philosophy thing for the C64, right ? a souped-up C64 compatible with 256 colors, blitter etc.. awesome.
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