Amiga 5000 ?

[melott]

With all the talk lately about the A1 and all the other
options, and even someone selling 'new/referbished'
A500s.
Where would the Amiga be now if someone picked
up where Comodore left off.
I mean we all love our classic Amigas... so what if
some company decided to start making a new
'Classic Amiga'. Like take an A4000 MoBo and
stick an 060 at 50mhz, soup-up the bus alittle,
make the PC slots active so you can use those
nice PC GFX cards or defalt to AGA. Maybe add
a couple USB ports and FireWire.
Priced along side a PC,
I'd buy one

Mel Ott
(dreaming)
;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

[Samuar]

Would you really though? I mean, yet another 68k based processor in today's PPC world??? I dont think I would. I dont see how it can be that hard to take the PPC on a board similar to that of Apple's (or a clone, like PowerComputing) add a more amiga like firmware/bios; throw amiga os onto it and call it the AmigaOne or A5000 for that matter.

Maybe I am naive, but ignorance is bliss.

[uncharted]

There were A5000s planned by several differnt companies along those lines. Sadly the custom chips are not available anymore and so a new "old style" amiga just isn't feasable.

There was a time where amiga clones could have boosted the market, unfortunately that time has well and truely past. IIRC Commodore UK were thinking of openely licencing the custom chips so that could have been a possibilty. Gateway could of made some money out of Amiga this way too (there are loads of ways Gateway could of made cash out of Amiga, but that's another story)

[dslcc]

I thought like that back about 5 years ago. I would have bought a
Boxer or a Walker back then.

Now I don't think that re-making a classic Amiga would be very cost
effective let alone possible. Pegasos and A1 have shown that PPC is
the way to go at least for now.

Wish all those dreams had come true long ago. :-)

David
.

[Stew]

Now an 060 at 1GHZ would pique my interest. Alas those what ifs...

Stew

[AmiDelf]

Amiga 6260 would be a kicker! ColdFire V5 at 800MHz, customed AAA+ 3D as default, Zorro 5iX slots, PCI, AGP, SD-RAM slots, Video Slots x32, usb 2.0 as standard...

yeah, such Amiga would kick Apple :) I am sure! 100%!

[takemehomegrandma]

melott wrote:
With all the talk lately about the A1 and all the other
options, and even someone selling 'new/referbished'
A500s.
Where would the Amiga be now if someone picked
up where Comodore left off.
I mean we all love our classic Amigas... so what if
some company decided to start making a new
'Classic Amiga'. Like take an A4000 MoBo and
stick an 060 at 50mhz, soup-up the bus alittle,
make the PC slots active so you can use those
nice PC GFX cards or defalt to AGA. Maybe add
a couple USB ports and FireWire.
Priced along side a PC,
I'd buy one

Mel Ott
(dreaming)
;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

IMO, it would be really nice! :-)

Please have a look at this (http://www.ann.lu/comments2.cgi?view=1056709426&category=web&start=1&55) (look for my comments in the thread).

What do you think about this?

OK, perhaps the coldfire CPU isn't the ultimate choice of CPU. The PPC will obviously be better from a performance (and future) POV, but IMO it would be nice to have a more "Amiga" like system design than just another "PC" CPU/NorthBridge/SouthBridge design. The "Not Yet-Another-PC" would be the main point, not the CPU itself.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the "Commodore One"! :-D

[Stew]

I agree there is not enough difference in the A1. Hope the OS (and apps) is a real killer and makes up for it. What had sold me on the Amiga was the graphics and video capabilities (way ahead at the time). Now it is looking like being well behind at the start. But at least it is a start.
I would love a modern fast machine that I could move my toaster/flyer equipment into. Would a coldfire or shark be compatible?

Stew

[Pokemon]

I would have liked to have had seen an Amiga based on the Hombre chipset. I wonder where we would have been if the Amiga was aloud to move forward at full speed and didnt have all the problems that we have had over the years.

Information about the Hombre chipset:
-CBM's Plans for the RISC-Chipset By: Dave Haynie-
http://amiga.emugaming.com/haynie3drisc.html

[Samuar]

Someone here mentioned the Commodore One. I took a look at some information on it, and it doesnt seem very appealing for the near £200 price.

I just bought a complete Apple Mac 8550/132 inc monitor for £52, including delivery @£30 (it was a very heavy package). Thats based on a 132MHz 604 PPC Processor. It seems a pity similar performance for price cant be had with Amiga.

[Staticman]

Wasnt there something called Boxer Amiga 5000 project?

Or is this long been dead wood now?

[Dan]

An Amiga-on-a chip, would be a better idea.

[Nick]

There was a Boxer and an Amiga 5000. They are/were both different machines. The A5000 was a C= thing. In development when it went belly up. Looked quite good (for then). Shame it never materialised. The Boxer was unlucky, in that it appeared (well sort of) when things were being setup. Amiga was directionless when the development started, but by the end, they sort of knew where they were going and it wasn`t towards the Boxer really. I wanted a Boxer :-( Oh well....I want an AmigaOne more! :-)

[Kronos]

@Nick


???? Wasn't the A5000 a DCE-project from the Escom-times ?

[N7VQM]

Staticman wrote:
Wasnt there something called Boxer Amiga 5000 project?

I think it was just "Boxer." The project was worked on by Mick Tinker and financed by now-defunct Anti-Gravity.

It's too bad this project is dead now. The AGA-chipset-in-FPGA would work nicely with the PDA idea expressed in the ANN thread.

[Agafaster]

Kronos was heard wittering

???? Wasn't the A5000 a DCE-project from the Escom-times ?

I think it was, but I think it may have been post Escom (possibly pre Gateway ?)
I recall DCE being involved, as was Toni Ianiri (IIRC) from Power Computing in Bedford - he has been involved in the ill-fated Apple Clone market along with Motorola, and others.
pity, it looked an interesting box (the A5000 that is...)

[Gopal]

Amiga History Guide (http://amiga.emugaming.com/)
has a lot of information covering A5000 (http://amiga.emugaming.com/power5000.html) and the Boxer design (http://amiga.emugaming.com/boxer.html).

Gopal

[Tomas]

its way to late for that now. 68k is dead. But if some company had done that years ago, instead of just milking the old current hardware.. Then i think Amigas future might have looked much brighter now. And would have probably moved onto ppc ages ago. Too bad escom only milked the last life out of it :-(

[takemehomegrandma]

An Amiga-on-a chip, would be a better idea.

The AGA-chipset-in-FPGA would work nicely with the PDA idea expressed in the ANN thread.

This looks interesting in the above context: http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xil_prodcat_landingpage.jsp?title=Virtex-II+Pro+FPGAs

A high performance FPGA with 0, 1, 2 or 4 PPC405 processors @400 MHz included on the chip!

BTW, have you heard of the Genesi "Eclipsis"? That will require a new kind of chipset. Before the deal with MAI screwed up, they were cooperating with MAI to develop one. That won't be AGA though ...

[Corrie]

I really believe that a 68060 @ 100Mhz with a decent gfx card, soundcard, 128Mb RAM, Ultrascsi controller would have been a good platform to run most applications, for god sake my A4000T 060 66Mhz, 128Mb, Ultrascsi runs excellently!!!! I simply do not see the real requirement for 1000Mhz+

After all, our Amiga is well known for iniative... ;-)

[PMC]

Wasnt there something called Boxer Amiga 5000 project?

A chap called Mick Tinker designed an Amiga compatible machine based around hardware emulation of the classic chipset. The emulation could be tweaked for improved perfromance, and the motherboard featured all kinds of improvements/enhancements etc.

This would have been an ideal stepping stone between the A4000 and the Amiga One, but unfortunately it never got beyond the prototype stage, and I believe that people who put deposits on the Boxer got their fingers burned. All very nasty.

A shame is it was a great "nearly" machine in concept.

[Sloxa]

there is somebody giving away free A5000 prototype.

if somebody wanna know more, more info is
suomenamigakäyttäjät ry, forum, there is place
sakutori and myydään.
:-)

[chipper701]

Cool idea. To be honest I don't see why not. After all they rereleases the Intellivision with a 10 game cart for $35 catering to retro-gaming.

[cv643d]

"19th March 2000. The new prototype is in the process of being tested. The laborious task of powering it up in stages, developing additional logic to support features and making sure everything works as intended is under way. I am expecting 2-4 months of development time before it is at the stage where it can be release for production."

-Mick Tinker

---------------------------------------------------------------

I think 2 years after they cancelled it (Boxer). And yes I remember that article in Amiga Format to about the Boxer... was it a 4 or 5 page article?

I had the money and a spare 060 for 2 years. I would buy one today if the price was around 300 euro including CPU. I dont understand this guy Mick Tinker, he could at least have sold those mini A1200 clone Acsess systems to normal Amiga people instead of only selling them to the proffesional market.

[Nick]

I`ve seen the Death Vigil DVD and as the guy walked around the old C= HQ he went into the research place and there was an A5000.

I want my own copy of that DVD!

[vortexau]

Kronos asked:???? Wasn't the A5000 a DCE-project from the Escom-times ?

Bingo! I recall an A5000 and A6000 as third-party projects in that era. The A5000 was to be A1200-mobo based, and the A6000 to be A4000-based.

I was hangingout for a BoXeR in 1987.

° What of the REC Wonder TV A6000?

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/a6000.gif


° What of Cerberus?

° What of The November Box?

(and the lamented MMC that Gateway-Amiga defaulted on?)

[Nick]

Hasn`t anybody seen that Death Digial DVD? I`m sure theres an A5000 in it.

[Nick]

Guess not :-)

[Jope]

Melott,

The 060@50MHz is not a fast cpu any more by today's standards. :-) the current "dream classic" ought to have something 040 compatible but 50 times faster. Literally at least 50. And 040, because not everything works well with the 060. :-)

I once had a dream of someone building a CPU card that had a Pentium or better CPU on it.. This would then bootstrap off a small rom and start emulating the 040 at high speed.

Unfortunately something like this would go to waste on the classic Amiga - the hardware isn't quite up to it any more. The buses are too slow, so the performance will die..

It'd have to be a whole new computer on the CPU card, one that only communicates with the onboard peripherals through the FAST slot. That's what they were going to make with the first AmigaOne, but perhaps it wasn't feasible..

Personally, I think the current way is the best, totally new hardware with "enough" legacy emulation in software. The only way to go forward is to stop looking back at some point.

[Jope]

Nick wrote:
I`ve seen the Death Vigil DVD and as the guy walked around the old C= HQ he went into the research place and there was an A5000.

I want my own copy of that DVD!

Eh? There was no such thing. The rarities shown were the A3500 and the NYX prototype. No A5000s.

[Palpatine]

Eh? There was no such thing. The rarities shown were the A3500 and the NYX prototype. No A5000s.

The A5000 was definitely a DCE product. The board had an AGA chipset, a 68030 and was supposed to get some sort of local bus connection to a device called the BrainStormer... This was a design for a PPC / PCI add-on card made by Escena. This later evolved into.. well you know what :-)

One of the A5000 prototypes should be on show at the Benelux Amiga Show / Benelux Pegasos Show in October ;-)

Cheers,
Ron

[olegil]

Coldfire 800MHz would rock, as would PCI/AGP/SDR (or DDR) etc.

But AAA or whatever just ain't feasible. Does anyone here honestly think anyone can go up against nVidia, Ati and Matrox, in their price range? I mean, they're practically giving away Radeon 7500s, do you have ANY idea how much faster than AGA that card is? It eats anything you can come up with for breakfast.


So basically, this would be stamped as "another PC clone" by everyone (especially Shawn, who still hasn't grasped the concept of "Zorro bus").

Come on, Zorro is 16 bit with 24bit addresses. The 32 bit extension is done the old fashioned way with double-pumped clock, which surely adds as much latency as PCI any day of the week.

Forget Zorro and AA(A(+)), and let's just follow the industry standards. The trick is to adopt the right standards at an early time. The day is past when the Amiga could create its own standards and be a success...

[pjhutch]

The 680x0 range is a dead end, its too slow for modern applications and no-one would touch it. PPC is the way fwd.

It would be fine for 'new' Amigas 5-10 yrs old but times have moved on and it would be uneconomical to produce such machines like the Boxer and A5000 now.

The AmigaOne is the way to go, support it and buy one otherwise live in the past.

[bloodline]

Corrie wrote:
I really believe that a 68060 @ 100Mhz with a decent gfx card, soundcard, 128Mb RAM, Ultrascsi controller would have been a good platform to run most applications, for god sake my A4000T 060 66Mhz, 128Mb, Ultrascsi runs excellently!!!! I simply do not see the real requirement for 1000Mhz+

After all, our Amiga is well known for iniative... ;-)

Maybe you don't do much music production? Nothing short of a 1Ghz Athlon is particilarly useful.

[Nick]

@Jope

Well OK then. I didn`t say there was, but I was wondering.

[DanDude]

I would still buy a PPC system with all of today's peripherals. 060 greater than 50MHz is still an option in my book. Screw Microsoft, screw Mac, MorphOS.