Amiga in an FPGA

posted Jan 14th 2006 11:00am by
filed under: pcs hacks

 mini amiga
Dennis had been working on this project for over a year before recently releasing it in the Amiga.org forums (photos). The Amiga was notable for its use of unique, dedicated processor chips for tasks like real time video effects. Dennis has recreated these chips in a Xilinx Spartan-3 400K gate FPGA. His development board also features a MC68000 processor and an MMC card for storage. He’s got everything, but sound and keyboard support working. He is able to run Lemmings though, and isn’t that what’s really important?

[thanks Seantech]

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15 Responses to Amiga in an FPGA

  • pocketbrain says:
    January 14, 2006 at 12:00 pm

    Is this a precursor to an Amiga SOAC? Does one already exist?

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  • Speed phreak says:
    January 14, 2006 at 12:33 pm

    Ah, Lemmings on the Amiga. So that’s where my childhood went…

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  • markie says:
    January 14, 2006 at 2:40 pm

    awesome project! emulating old hardware in software is already nice, but actually recreating it in an FPGA like this is insane (and very very cool) :-)

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  • Eviltwin says:
    January 14, 2006 at 4:24 pm

    …and very very very much job!

    coding is done on 10 % of the time, rest is going on bugfix (90 %)

    Reply Report comment
  • ed3 says:
    January 14, 2006 at 8:21 pm

    Very cool!!

    Slightly apropos, should also check out the C-One. It is a recreation of the Commodore 64 in a modern form (C64 motherboard which fits in a ATX case [with slight modification], ATX power supply, uses PC keyboards, hdrives, etc)…

    The board uses a replaceable CPU core module. It comes with a Motorola 65C816 module to support Commodore 64 environments, but in theory could be replaced with any 8-bit CPU module (eg. real 6502, 6809, or Z80).

    Not a hack… http://c64upgra.de/c-one/

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  • ex-parrot says:
    January 14, 2006 at 9:27 pm

    some people on the forum are calling foul… anyone FPGA experts care to comment on how possible this would be to do?

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  • ex-parrot says:
    January 14, 2006 at 9:34 pm

    I spoke too soon, people are retracting their cries of “it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax” already :)

    Reply Report comment
  • ravuya says:
    January 15, 2006 at 2:39 am

    Unbelievable! I crave one of these.

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  • erkan says:
    January 15, 2006 at 6:44 am

    Its real and working.

    And hes got sound working now. Check the huge thread at amiga.org.

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  • Andre says:
    January 15, 2006 at 9:16 am

    In reply to ex-parrot’s question on if this were possible:

    Entirely! I’m a graduate of computer engineering in Ottawa, Canada, and building a computer on an FPGA was part of the curriculum. We didn’t do amiga, however, we re-created an Acorn CPU. I remember the hardest part for me was the damned VGA controller because you had to get the signal timing just right! Any deviation would result in really weird images. Ah, the memories!

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  • Seantech says:
    January 15, 2006 at 9:42 pm

    Dennis went from his first blink-a-led ‘program’ on the fpga right to making Minimig, and Minimig is now very much a reality!
    Dennis should be giving a public demo on 18 Feb at the HCC Commodore User Group [http://commodore-gg.hobby.nl/indexeng.htm], in Maarssen, The Netherlands. Any of you that are willing, interested and able to join are more than welcome!

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  • John Bokma says:
    January 17, 2006 at 3:37 am

    @10 which Acorn computer? BBC?

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  • justin pierringer says:
    January 17, 2006 at 5:08 pm

    Fairy Tails was my favorite game for the amiga, congrats on the project.

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  • ipod-owner says:
    August 18, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    Update:

    The project is still going strong.

    Here is a link to another cool homebuilt Amiga clone: http://www.natami.net/

    Reply Report comment
  • FPGA & CPLD Blogs says:
    May 26, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    Is there any more updates in this? I would like to find out more about it.

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