- Ordering New Firebee? -

[warp12]

If I order the complete unit, as listed on the Medusa site, what will I need to get it going? What does it include?

I am in the USA. What type of keyboard will it accept, what power supply? Case? OS? Anything else?

Thanks.

[Dal]

I think they are sold out - Check with medusa.

[Mathias]

Yes, we are recently sold out. But we are preparing a next series of FireBee boards.

For your questions please visit the project website http://acp.atari.org/about.html .

[warp12]

Yes, we are recently sold out. But we are preparing a next series of FireBee boards.

For your questions please visit the project website http://acp.atari.org/about.html .

When is the next series going to be available?

[Mathias]

When is the next series going to be available?

I can' t tell it right now. We will make a public announcement as soon as all questions are cleared.

[AtariSociety]

Does anyone know if this new board for 2015 will be the same exact board or minor bugs or adjustments made and it be a newer Rev board?

TJ

[Dal]

Bugs?!? What bugs?

[AtariSociety]

Bugs?!? What bugs?

Don't know but that is why I ask.

I am guessing after some time using these boards, maybe some things were found and tweeks are to be made.

Or is this firebee board perfect as is?

TJ

[jfl]

Bugs?!? What bugs?

Don't know but that is why I ask.

I am guessing after some time using these boards, maybe some things were found and tweeks are to be made.

Or is this firebee board perfect as is?

It certainly isn't perfect. But what the machine needs most is VHDL developers to improve the internal logic of the board. Having one from the 1st or 2nd batch won't change much in that respect.

[Mathias]

Does anyone know if this new board for 2015 will be the same exact board or minor bugs or adjustments made and it be a newer Rev board?

TJ

There will for sure be no redesign. But of course there are some posibilities to improve the board slightly. But exactly that is one of the opened questions. Its not decided what will be changed.

And of course jfl is right regarding VHDL manpower!

[wongck]

need faster graphics.

[Faucon2001]

I agree with Wongck. Video is too slooooow, which I understood was VHDL related
And also a faster memory,disk and network access. But is it soft or hard related?

[Rajah Lone]

Yes, the FireBee isn't perfect, thanks to the ball mourners ("au ballet des pleureuses") for reminding it on every occasion.
But it's there. I'm very happy with this alpha version. GFA coding is really a pleasure. Thanks to all the people involved in this project for the job already done.

Every one is free to (try to) learn and see the open-source.

[Faucon2001]

Suggesting improvements does not mean people are complaining, criticizing and not recognizing the work and tremendous efforts done by many in this project. So thank you for the incredible job which has been done so far on the Firebee and to all who have contributed to it.

Now, if I remember the question: is the performance of memory, disk and network, software or hardware related?

[Mathias]

Well the problem with "suggestions" regarding improvements is, that they often come at the wrong place and often feel as accusation.
"Needs faster graphics" below talking about slightly hardware mods is not the right place. Of course we know that scrolling is too slow. But it is a VHDL issue, and you all know that I am begging for VHDL manpower and support for years now.
Sometimes I even got the feeling that so few people - out of the about 100 that contributed to the project - take responsibility in the public, is because of such accusations.

Don't get me wrong, everybody shall speak up and talk about his thoughts. But it would be much better for example to make a new thread named "what can we do to achive faster scrolling" than to just throw it in like if we would do marketing tricks and tell you scrolling is fine, ...

About Philipes questions: memory access is done by the DDR Controller inside the ColdFire microprocessor - so not really changeable. DMA for IDE is a combination of hardware (2 more lines would be needed, that could be done) and software, but it is not simple. And about Network, I do not see any problems, what did you have in mind?

[Faucon2001]

Thanks Mathias for the explanation, and feel comfortable that there is no accusation, it's a miracle that a new computer be developed more than 20 years after Atari left the market, and on top without any commercial perspective.

Regarding network, the Firebee is equipped with a 100 Mbits network card and can't achieve more than 16 Mbits/s (see benchmarks I posted months ago). I know that's bigger than what can be achieved on any real Atari machine, but it's slow compared to the potential of the interface.

[mfro]

Regarding network, the Firebee is equipped with a 100 Mbits network card and can't achieve more than 16 Mbits/s (see benchmarks I posted months ago). I know that's bigger than what can be achieved on any real Atari machine, but it's slow compared to the potential of the interface.

For me, iperf always does more than 90mbps which is very close to the physical limit of a 100MBit interface. So Firebee networking isn't slow.

CompactFlash access IS slow and that's probably the bottleneck of your benchmarks.

[jfl]

CompactFlash access IS slow and that's probably the bottleneck of your benchmarks.

Speaking of which, do you think replacing the CF card with a standard laptop hard drive would improve performances in a noticeable manner?

[mfro]

CompactFlash access IS slow and that's probably the bottleneck of your benchmarks.

Speaking of which, do you think replacing the CF card with a standard laptop hard drive would improve performances in a noticeable manner?

No, I don't think so.

Not with the current FPGA implementation and not without additional wiring. The Firebee's slot is missing needed pins for DMA modes and because of that - unfortunately - limited to programmed I/O.

[wongck]

Yes, the FireBee isn't perfect, thanks to the ball mourners ("au ballet des pleureuses") for reminding it on every occasion.

Code: Select all

Your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you.
When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore that means they’ve given up on you

One can learn lots of good stuff from Randy Pausch. See his lecture on Youtube.

[warp12]

Any plans for a new production run?

[Mathias]

Any plans for a new production run?

Yes, and we will soon be able to tell you more.

[Xyla]

Will the next batch of Firebees have the problem of 1920x1080 resolution not working with all monitors fixed? I was never clear on whether this was a hardware defect or something wrong in the FPGA. I will admit that the uncertainty of the Firebee working with my monitor was part of the reason I hesitated too long on buying one from the first production run.

[oehansen]

Are there any plans for a next generation FireBee? A faster CPU/Graphics variation?

[vido]

Are there any plans for a next generation FireBee? A faster CPU/Graphics variation?

Well ... regarding graphics there is allready driver for PCI Radeon graphic card built into FireTOS and that would give faster graphics. There just have to be found cheap/cheaper solution for PCI backplane.

Next generation FireBee? FireBee can be upgraded in this version all the time. You can add different FPGA acclerators for Graphics, video decoding, rendering, ... you just need FPGA developers! As FireBee is open project and nobody earns anything selling it, the community has to upgrade it itself. There is no company behind to do it instead!

Except the faster CPU there is actualy nothing realy to upgrade. And there is no faster Coldfire for the reasonable price. Except if you find documentation for V5e Coldfire CPU! Then you can count there will be much faster FireBee done