If you were a computer enthusiast in the late 1980s or early 1990s, the chances are that one of your objects of desire would have been a Commodore Amiga. These machines based on the 68000 line of processors and a series of specialized co-processors offered the best compromise between performance and affordability at the time, with multitasking, a GUI, and graphics capabilities that were streets ahead of their competition.
The Amiga story is littered with tales of what might have been, as dismal marketing and lacklustre product refreshes caused it to lurch from owner to owner and eventually fade away from the mainstream in the mid 1990s. But it’s been one of those products that never really died, as a band of enthusiasts have kept a small market for its software and hardware alive.
Earlier this year we showed you a prototype of an unusual graphics card, a modern GPU implemented on an FPGA board that brought up-to-date HDMI monitor support to the Zorro expansion slots found in the big-box Amigas. It’s thus very interesting today to find that the board made it to market, and that you can buy one for your Amiga if you have a spare 189 Euros (now sold out but taking pre-orders for another production run). Producing any niche electronic product is a significant challenge, so it is always positive to see one that makes it.
As well as HDMI output the board features a micro SD card slot that is mountable as an Amiga volume, and an expansion header that is toured as “Hacker friendly”. Best of all though, the whole board is open-source with all resources on a GitHub repository, so as well as reading our coverage of the prototype you can immerse yourself in its internals if that is your thing.
It’s always good to see a new piece of hardware for an old computer see the light of day, though it’s fair to say this development won’t revive the Amiga platform in the way that the Raspberry Pi has for RiscOS. Still, the mere fact of an open-source Zorro FPGA implementation being released should mean that other cards become possible, so we await developments with interest.
[via forums.xilinx.com]
Jenny : thanks for the article. You should also drop an eye on “Vampire” project (FPGA accelerator card for A600, A500/2000, A1200, A4000) : Majsta and rest of appolo team are cool guys !
The A1200 model isn’t yet available (probably in 2017). More infos on http://apollo-accelerators.com/
Nah, too expensive and not open source. do not like.
Completely open source, but still too pricey. https://github.com/mntmn/amiga2000-gfxcard
He was referring to Vampire…
Couldn’t care less that it’s not open source. I have one in my A500 and I love it.
189 euros isn’t bad for custom hardware.
Considering how niche it is too, i’d say that’s pretty darn good.
As asked by a fan of the Amiga Vampire card to its designer – “When does the Amiga just become a keyboard?”
Amiga has become a sysinfo loader a long time ago. All those addons are used only to satisfy memberies, to load sysinfo and bask in the glory of red bar being longer than blue bars.
‘member Amiga? I ‘member. :)
Stuff like this and the Vampire accelerators help people trick out their retro rigs without paying through the nose for unobtainium hardware. 68060s and Picasso cards don’t grow on trees. I’d consider buying a Vampire just to play the copy of Birds of Prey I bought back in the day. A stock A500 can’t play that game worth shit.
because there is no PC version of that game and no emulators …
there was a pc version from memory
There is a PC version and of course, rasz_pl was being facetious, grab an Amiga emu and put it on a nice newer Core i7 Win7/x64 PC with any DX9 card and above and you can play that game until your fingers and eyes bleed!
Hobbyist computing is a thing you know.
Looks nice, and cheap too for custom hardware, but i don’t think its compatible for everyone.
Love it or leave it or just use it for funning the young folks, they go wild when you fire it up! Cheap price for something new and it is just money I would spend on WIN crap anyway.
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why dont we start thinking about putting it on an amiga 1200. the only computer that really needs any type of rtg these days is the amiga 1200. a gpu on an fpga, puts type right up there with the 4000. now all we need is a good sound card with midi and wavetable synthesis. dual strung cable with accelerator pass through anyone?