
Rämixx500 – An Open Hardware remake of the Commodore Amiga 500+ mainboard - doener
https://github.com/SukkoPera/Raemixx500
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MaxBarraclough
Is this really 'open hardware'? The licence has complex and seemingly
imprecise restrictions on right-to-sell.

The terms even become more restrictive as the Euro inflates!

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cmrdporcupine
As an outsider looking in for some reason this seems endemic to the Amiga
community more than other retro systems. On the Atari ST even though it is a
smaller community we have a completely open source GPL implementation of the
operating system plus (EmuTOS) extensions for it (FreeMint, fVDI, etc.), and
several hardware projects etc. with pretty open communities, if less of them.

On the Amiga side every project seems to have licensing which seems to always
be defined such that someone thinks they're going to make a successful
commercial project out of it Any Day Now. It's strange.

~~~
teddyh
Yes! In my observations (also as a relative outsider), it has been like this
at least from the early 1990s. Every little itty-bitty program for the Amiga
cost money.

I am also reminded of how Carl Sassenrath thought it would be a good idea to
release Rebol under only a proprietary license. The Rebol project, which
initially had (IIRC) enormous hype and mindshare during development, tanked,
and I think this was large reason why. This is despite the time being just
right for a new good scripting language: PHP and Python were just beginning,
and Perl was slowly dying.

(Rebol was eventually released under an Open Source license in 2012, when
nobody cared about Rebol anymore.)

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mrweasel
Someone already made a new Amiga mainboard and have been selling them, the
Retro Man Cave did a series on building "The worlds newest Amiga"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECu6i6WR7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECu6i6WR7)

So remaking the mainboard is certainly possible, getting the custom chips
seems to be much harder. The chips can't be consider that advanced anymore, so
I wonder if you can get some Chinese manufacturer to duplicate them, if you
had working chips for them to copy?

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segfaultbuserr
> _The chips can 't be consider that advanced anymore, so I wonder if you can
> get some Chinese manufacturer to duplicate them, if you had working chips
> for them to copy? _

I believe reverse engineering the silicon still takes serious amount of money.
But is it really required? Reimplementing the chips from scratch with FPGAs is
a much more practical option, since everything is already pretty much
documented by the simulator community.

And it appears that someone has already done something on it.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig)

> _Minimig started around January 2005 as a proof of concept by Dutch
> electrical engineer Dennis van Weeren. He intended Minimig as the answer to
> the ongoing discussions within the Amiga community on implementing the Amiga
> custom chipset using an FPGA. The project 's source code and schematics were
> released under version 3 of the GNU General Public Licence on 25 July 2007.
> _

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rbanffy
Why even go that far? Software emulation is good enough for the vast majority
of the users.

What would be very interesting would be a way to compile software emulators
that have very consistent sets of rules for how hardware is expressed (such as
MAME) into an FPGA.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
> _Why even go that far? Software emulation is good enough for the vast
> majority of the users._

To replace a failed ASIC on a physical Amiga (or a Amiga replica), which will
be unavailable in the future. Don't forget the original topic of the article
is a recreation of the physical Amiga.

~~~
rbanffy
It gets trickier when you need to replace one of the ASICs, but if all you
want is the physical object and the user experience, without much regard for
the internals, software emulation combined with support for the user-facing
aspects (keyboard, mouse, screen perhaps), the approach taken by the c64 mini
people with their larger breadbox model seems interesting. Having a drop in
replacement for aging Amiga motherboards that can run the software and
replicate the user experience without necessarily replicating the underlying
hardware seems to be a good 80/20 approach.

There will be people interested in the accurate replication of the hardware.
For those there is no replacement for the real thing or something very close
to it.

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snvzz
This is especially useful as an A500+ replacement, as the A500+ comes with one
of those varta barrel batteries that tend to leak and destroy the boards.

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tyingq
Great README. I like these projects where the documentation clearly shows the
passion and expertise involved.

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Zenst
So you will still need to source the chips, CPU won't be major issue, though
denise, paula, gary and agnus from what I can tell will still be a sourcing
issue. More so as they are not made and only made for the Amiga, so be harder
to source.

THough as there battery on the Amiga and many old kit are known to expire in
epic ways and leak all over the place, which will quickly kill the board, and
depending how stored - will take out some of the chips as well. So for many
this will be good for those with access to those chips, those chips will be
the hard part sourcing wise if you need those.

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fulafel
There are a lot of mentions that this is untested, are there any hints about
why the author hasn't gotten to try it out yet? Maybe it's unfinished?

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gardaani
If you have an Amiga (or any other old electronic device), then you should
remove any old batteries inside. Batteries leak and destroy electronics.

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JKCalhoun
> This mainboard was designed with reasonable - not maniacal - accuracy to the
> original design.

And that's when I approved their effort.

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classified
I guess the name is a pun on "remix".

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miohtama
Rämä also means "broken" on Finnish

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unixhero
Somebody needs to order a batch of these printed from China and try it out!

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LeonM
Actually, China is often a less-than-ideal option for prototypes, unless you
live in or near China.

I can't talk for the US, but in Europe where I live there are some amazingly
cheap options for prototype batches. You could probably order a prototype
batch (2~3 boards) for around 150 euro with a 7 day delivery. Ordering from
China from EU will probably take around a month to arrive.

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soneil
Any you'd suggest in particular? I often find it cheaper to get 10 boards made
in China than to get 1-2 made anywhere near remotely local. (And DHL from
China isn't a lot slower than DHL from Germany)

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fit2rule
Germany isn't a bad place to get 100 - 1,000 PCB's of this magnitude made ..
perhaps you'd be better off doing the hardware assembly in Hungary or Croatia
right now, albeit for the current cruise notwithstanding, of course ..

