@KimmoK

Quote:

IMO, there is no Amiga (custom) connector that guys like Jens of Individual computers have not used & tinkered with ((except the SAM FPGA)). TrevorD might even send him a board for free.

Jens is mainly interested in retro-stuff - C64 and the Amiga.
He didn't toss around with the AmigaOne (I highly doubt he even owns one) and he wasn't particularly interested in SAM either. So I doubt he will spend any effort on the X1000. Even from an economic POV, I believe that developing hardware for the C64 or Amiga will be more profitable than developing hardware for a high-end system like the X1000 which will possibly generate just a few hundred sales.

Last edited by polka. on 16-Mar-2010 at 02:16 PM.

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@KimmoK

Quote:

xcore can be programmed on board, by anyone, even automatically via SW. FPGA can not (IIRC).

You can with an FPGA too. The issue is one of skillset - an FPGA requires electronics knowledge, and Verilog or VHDL skills. XMOS requires "just" C, either plain C using a small library of functions for port access, or XC, which is pretty much C with a handful of small extensions.

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@KimmoK
But can't you just buy a US$40 USB board and program XMOS form any computer? Why do you need to have it physically attached to the motherboard? All the demos of XMOS I've seen you program the XMOS and then you set it free to do it's thing. What value does it add to actually have it physically attached to the machine, especially when the physical attachment is not faster than USB?

I've got a several ideas about how to use XMOS, none of them involve tying it to a boat anchor desktop box...

@opi

Quote:

I'll bet you a dollar that there will be no usable thing connected to X1000 made by 3th part developers in a first quoter after X1000 will hit shelfs. It's not because people are not capable. Risking your +1500 Euro board is not something that developers do daily.

If it isn't, that will be more of an issue of the size of this community and the very short timeline you're giving (a quarter? give me a break), not of the "risk".

I couldn't afford to break my A500 back in the day, and yet I still had the case open more often than not, chips out, stuff being soldered etc. Comparatively speaking, the loss of a 1500+ Euro board today would be far less of an issue to me than the loss of my A500 would've been back then.

Quote:

History of "geek" connectivity on desktop computers is mostly a failure. Be computer had GeekPort and no projects, Sam has FPGA, number of projects that surfaced?

On the other hand the proliferation of homebrew projects for the Amiga is/was a counter example. "Geek" connectivity on the Amiga was a success - people hooked things up to the side extension/ the internal Zorro slots, the parallel ports, even the CPU socket, custom chip sockets and more, because it was easy (lots of socketed chips; easily accessible connectors etc.), well documented and reasonably safe.

Ironically, of those, the parallel port which might've been considered the least intimidating, was often the costliest option - being a frequent cause of burning out poorly protected 8520's (I burned out 4-5 8520's over the years, compared to no other chips despite soldering stuff straight onto the 68k pins...)

Aminet is still full of docs for various hacks and mods...

Personally I won't have any hesitation of connecting homemade stuff to the X1000 when I find something fun to do with it. Will I be careful? Yes. I might for that matter use a USB XMOS dev-kit to experiment with first until I'm sure I know what I'm doing. But personally, my experience is that if you're the slightest bit careful, the risk of burning out a board just aren't that high.

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@persia

Three reasons: Elegance; having it connected to the CPU bus; making sure every X1000 has one. Last faq mentioned the CPU bus, and that *might* open up "fun" options depending on how flexible that connection is. Having one in every X1000 has the obvious benefit of making it more attractive to target for developers who don't only want to use it themselves.

As for applications that benefits from it being on the system bus. First thing that springs to mind: Use it as a watchdog (co-processor to monitor the system for problems and trigger a reset/reboot on hangs or react to other specific events).

Other things that to some extent at least depends on the flexibility of the CPU bus connectivity: Use it for "deep" debugging - a serial console and ability to monitor and manipulate data on the CPU bus and/or mess with the system state in the case of a crash would be fun to play with and potentially quite useful. It might even be possible to offer a subset of IPMI capabilities this way with no or few mods. Emulating other chips tied straight to the CPU bus (testing design ideas, for example; I don't think it's suitable for emulation of bandwidth intensive or high performance chips) with precise timing without having to jump through all kinds of hoops to do cycle accurate emulation directly on the main CPU.

Those are uses I could see myself putting it to, from 5 minutes of thinking about the "why not on USB?" question. Once we have actual specs we'll find out if they're all feasible, and we'll have plenty of basis for coming up with more.

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@polka.

Quote:

polka. wrote: Jens is mainly interested in retro-stuff - C64 and the Amiga.

(Geez you guys write fast)

I'm not dismissing any of your points.

Looking at the (popular) classics they had one advantage over the more recent
offerings in the Amiga arena. Stability. A developer could take some time to
investigate what might be a viable product, design it, test it, and check to make
sure there was a market before going into production. All because the machines
were out there, and they were all the same (within a given group). i.e. The Video
Toaster, Picasso, etc..

The future of the new AmigaOne is not yet written. Certainly the 'Dark Side'
is trying to cloud that future. Its success or failure may be determined not
only by how many people buy the product initially, but also how many may get
one just because of something special that has been developed by 3rd parties or
as a add-on by A-eon. Heck, perhaps even NASA will get one to tinker with, they
seem to have open minds.

If this computer is at least break-even successful then A-eon will have a
good baseline of what the market is and what they need to do. For example, maybe
the next revision would have two Xenas with a 16x slot where the first portion
( 8x ) is compatible with any presently available cards at that time. Or, two
Xena/Xorro combos. Or,,, something else out of the o-r-d-i-n-a-r-y.

So, even if only a few hundred are sold initially, a developer can make a big
difference in how many will be sold just for his product. Ask NewTek.

When I got my A2000 the first thing I did, after getting it fired up for awhile,
was to pour over the schematics in the back of the books. Wow, the things that
could be done.

Ready, set, enable!

Accidentally found this:
http://www.titan.co.nz/amigaak/AA060153.htm
(Amiga video slot specs)

High end Amigas have always had very cool connectors.

Let's see what xorro enables.

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// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
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// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@Mechanic

Quote:

Moxee, I can't post the picture. Your pants fell down and I don't want to be accused of peddling porno.

You are forgiven, my child.

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Moxee
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne XE G4
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: When developing HW you most certainly will encounter "magic smoke" at one point or another. Do it on the blank Xorro card -> good chance of frying (parts of) your motherboard. Do it on a USB-breakoutboard -> good chance you will fry only that board. Do it on a PCI-proto-board (these come with a PCI-encoder preassembled) -> good chance of frying just that proto board.

Do it on a Xorro proto board -> good chance that you'll fry just the proto board.

The same protection technology that is used on other proto boards could be used with the Xorro slot.

Quote:

Now you can rant as much as you want about what you think are my motives but rest assured I would be just as uncooperative if Genesi had released such an ill-designed and overpriced Efika2 or Pegasos3.

Would you also start ripping into their new board before full specifications and actual price are released?

Hans

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https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

@vidarh

"You can with an FPGA too."

IIRC. It's not possible on SAM. (originally I thought it would be possible, but then I was told differently)

@persia

My point was that one does not need to buy that extra HW to start experimenting, if the chip already is on the motherboard.

> Why do you need to have it physically attached to the motherboard?

I've not said it needs to be attached to the motherboard.
But I see no harm it being there.

> All the demos of XMOS I've seen you program the XMOS and then you set it free to do it's thing.

IIRC, there exist also things like PCI audio card(s) that use xcore. They usually need lower latency than USB, etc.

>What value does it add to actually have it physically attached to the machine, especially when the physical attachment is not faster than USB?

Do you know the connection speed on x1000? (you do not)
I'm 100% sure the connection has lower latency than via standard USB. (otherwise they would have used one of the USB ports to connect it)

>I've got a several ideas about how to use XMOS, none of them involve tying it to a boat anchor desktop box...

I see no harm of xcore being on the mnotherboard. One can always have them separately as well, x1000 have 10 USB ports, etc...


We do not yet know what kind of things xcore is able to do with the motherboard.
We do not know if it can run also when PPC is not running, if it can do watchdog function straight out of the box, etc...

about xorro...
It will be interesting to see what's on it, really. How it compares to Geek Port, VideoSlot, etc.

UPDATE: slideset for cofeebrake: http://dkc1.digikey.com/us/en/tod/XMOS/DesigningwithXMOS/DesigningwithXMOS.html

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// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@vidarh

Quote:

As for applications that benefits from it being on the system bus.

With the parallel and serial port gone from new motherboards, a lot of old hardware hacks are just not possible any more. For example, a lot of DIY CNC machines (e.g., computer controlled milling machine) work by bit-banging the parallel port, which is getting harder and harder to find. You can't do that with a USB connected parallel port because timing isn't guaranteed. I remember someone who was using cutting foam wings for model aircraft using a PC based CNC hot-wire rig. He said that Windows multitasking disrupted the CNC software enough to mess up the pulse timing that was sent to the motors, resulting in depressions in the wing. This issue would only be made worse with a USB based parallel port, or GPIO breakout board. In this case, low latency precise timing would be a very good thing.

The Xorro port could replace the parallel port. Sure, you could build a microcontroller based USB board that controls the machines, but that's a lot more effort than taking existing software, and getting the PC to output the motor step pulses itself. Giving the CNC process a high priority should be enough to get reliable timing on the Amiga. If the XENA chip can suck the data directly from memory, then this gets even easier.

What about burning out your X1000 when you do this? Easy, there are these things called opto-isolators that are great for isolating circuitry from high voltage spikes.

What about "serving a wider market?" It's a DIY CNC machine. Who cares?

Hans

P.S. I'm not suggesting that you stick your expensive new Amiga in your garage next to a greasy machine. However, if you think that it's fun, by all means go ahead.

Last edited by Hans on 18-Mar-2010 at 07:07 AM.

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@Hans


>P.S. I'm not suggesting that you stick your expensive new Amiga in your garage next to a greasy >machine. However, if you think that it's fun, by all means go ahead.

Note that if you do, the X1000 can be used as a fully solid state device. It can boot from CF without the need for a harddrive or an optical drive or any other peripherals vulnerable to dust or other environmental conditions which are unsuitable for moving parts.

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@Hyperionmp

Quote:

the X1000 can be used as a fully solid state device. It can boot from CF without the need for a harddrive or an optical drive or any other peripherals vulnerable to dust or other environmental conditions which are unsuitable for moving parts.

Now you're talking..
If we can combine a fanless CPU and a fanless power supply, you may become very attractive to the embedded market, as a "high reliability" controller.

It's been a long time since I started replacing industrial control screens with Amiga 1000 computers. a fanless, driveless option would have been welcome back then.

That's just more possibilities to think about now.. ;)

LyleHaze

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@Kronos Quote:

Maybe should read what umisef wrote once again ......

I was talking to you not umisef, so no need to bring him into the argument, just because yours failed badly.

BTW, I guess you also object to parallel ports, because people could fry their computer trying to control stuff using them? Reason you never thought of this is because you are focussed on blindly criticising, rather than on thinking of solutions. You demonstrate your motivations very well.

Last edited by ChrisH on 18-Mar-2010 at 09:08 AM.

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@opi Quote:

Turning your head and covering your ears is cultish. Remember when Troika shown Amy'05 and Bernd said it won't run because of nature of electricity and all that? Where's Amy'05? You can't just dismiss opinions of people you disagree with.

Comparing X1000/AEon to Amy/Troika is ridiculous & insulting, and shows a complete lack of objectivity on your part.

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@persia Quote:

(XMOS) Why do you need to have it physically attached to the motherboard?

Because you can? Because it's cheap way to do it? Because it makes it a standard feature? Because it allows a fast(ish) connection to the CPU bus? etc

If you don't like it, then don't use it. It didn't add much cost to the mobo.

edit: How many people here are complaining about the serial port chip included on their mobo, because it's useless to them these days? Or the (not so common these days) firewire chip included on their mobo? Or the (virtually useless) PCI slots included on their mobo? So why then are you focusing criticism on the XCore chip so much? If you won't use it, it didn't add much to the cost, so don't worry. (Assuming the moaners are even interested in an X1000, which seems unlikely.)

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@Hyperionmp

Quote:

Hyperionmp wrote: @Hans >P.S. I'm not suggesting that you stick your expensive new Amiga in your garage next to a greasy >machine. However, if you think that it's fun, by all means go ahead. Note that if you do, the X1000 can be used as a fully solid state device. It can boot from CF without the need for a harddrive or an optical drive or any other peripherals vulnerable to dust or other environmental conditions which are unsuitable for moving parts.

I'd completely forgotten about the CF slot. That's a nice feature. Add a touch-screen panel (Rigo's got a driver) and you're all set.

Hans

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@ChrisH/Hans

I can buy "protected" proto-boards for USB, PCI, PAR or SER without much hassle, a "protected" Xorro-board would need to be developed.

People developing such boards from scratch (read unprotected) will most likely 1st connect it to some old obsolete HW to check for fatal errors on the HW-side.

Voltages and pin-outs on most busses/connectors are fixed the suggestion that those will be user-programable on Xorro will lead to some dramatic effects due to simple typos.

Last edited by Kronos on 18-Mar-2010 at 10:03 AM.

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@Kronos

I hate to break this to you but you are completely off the mark here.

What are you credentials anyway to make such statements?

Are you a hardware engineer? Do you have experience with the XMOS chips?

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@Hyperionmp

Any estimate of when we get more info about AOS4 progress with x1000 support?

What features is planned to have in AOS4 when it ships with the x1000?
(I believe the HW has such insane amount of features to support that not all are initially supported.)

And, btw. Who is using HyperionMP user account nowdays?

(IIRC, Everton was supposed to be the MP, but some text seem like Ben had written it.)

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_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?