
A New Motherboard for Amiga, the Platform That Refuses to Die - Elof
https://hackaday.com/2019/07/21/a-new-motherboard-for-amiga-the-platform-that-refuses-to-die/
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goldcd
I'm feeling a little dense - but what's the point of this?

I get it's a new board, you can take your chips off your old board and now put
them on your new board (which is broken down into component boards).

i.e. My understanding is that you could take your existing A1200 and put a new
board in the case, move your chips to the new board... and you'll have
something that acts like your A1200... The thing you started with..

My best guess from reading 2-links down is that the selling point is that you
now have modularity. Purpose of this project is that subsequent work can
replace sub-sections of the A1200 with something more modern (for example
HDMI-out as mentioned below) - but if you did this (replaced all the
daughterboards with upgraded versions) it wouldn't be an A1200 any more..

 _just generally confused_

Wouldn't a FPGA approach be the way to go, if that's what you want?

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metroholografix
Not necessarily, FPGA cores are not faithful reproductions of the Amiga custom
chips.

I think the main premise here is that the Amiga custom chips can, with proper
care, last for a lifetime or more, but the Amiga PCBs (some of which are 30+
years old now) only get brittle with time. Capacitors leak, traces are
damaged/corroded, pins on headers break etc. People attempting repairs with
substandard equipment/training also exasperate this issue by damaging the
(limited) supply of original PCBs even more.

A new PCB solves this issue and also provides modularity for future
extensions. At the end, it’s still an Amiga, behaving exactly like an original
Amiga would.

~~~
goldcd
Thanks, you're right, I was being dense.

My feeble mind can accept that it's just a replacement board, you can host all
your existing chips on.

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myrandomcomment
This is pretty cool. If he adds an RTG board with HDMI then I will buy it!

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jacobush
Check this out then - [http://www.majsta.com](http://www.majsta.com)

a new implementation of Amiga with insane specs.

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ebg13
"Your [sic] coming from a site that we don't like."

Well, gosh.

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Wowfunhappy
To anyone confused, when you click the link in the GP, the website just
displays a message "Your coming from a site we don't like", and redirects you
back to the hacker news homepage.

I wonder why they don't like us...

~~~
TehCorwiz
EDIT: I'm an idiot, name, not url.

The word 'hacker' in the name probably.

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smitty1e
The need for alternative/open platforms grows daily.

~~~
O1111OOO
Big fan of alternative OSes. I would add the word: _viable_ to
alternative/open platforms.

In lots of use cases this just means a modern, up-to-date, browser. Firefox OS
had the potential to become instantly _viable_ but Mozilla (I feel) was
working with blinders on.

Haiku and ReactOS are at the cusp. ArcaOS (the latest OS/2 incarnation) would
be jaw-dropping exciting if somehow (not likely) they went Open Source.

Aside from the major commercial players, distroLinux and the BSDs... I don't
see lots of _viability_ out there (sadly). Maybe Android x86 (though it's
frustrating to use as a Desktop OS)...?

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officeplant
FirefoxOS was eye opening when I picked up one of the cheap $40 ZTE phones
they were promoting with it. It ran extremely well on the bottom of the barrel
SOCs vs similarly spec'd android phones. I was sad to see it gone so quickly.

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throwaway3627
I remember Amigas were still sold in specialty independent stores in the late
90's.

