Suska... ordering(?!)

[xc8]

Hiya,

I just noticed that the Suska started pre-orders:
http://shop.inventronik.de/store

congrats to guyz there! nice work..
I am wonder how much would be the price for the Suska-III-T.

Chris

[Mug UK]

619 Euros???? Ouch!

[alexh]

Total and utter madness

[DarkLord]

Total and utter madness

and convert that to US Dollars, with S&H. Ouch to the 10th power and madness squared!

[Grunaki]

Looks like a nice thing to play with, but that price tag is seriously prohibitive - especially since you have things like STEEM if your primary motivation is playing games..

[jvas]

619 Euros???? Ouch!

Considering the features and efforts put in this project (and the expected number of units sold) the price is fair.
But viewing it from the viewpont of a buyer, yes it is a bit expensive.

[xc8]

I wonder what is the size of the FPGA. ACP's is 40k gates (and the price would be around 600 (?) eur)....

[djbase]

Well, Suska is an 8-layer board, produced in very low quantities and they also want to get the developing costs (they spent between 10.000-20.000 Euros for prototypes and pre-series) so thats why the price is a bit higher then expected. This board might be more interesting for developers then end users. At least I don't need an STE-Clone for 600 Euro but thats something everyone has to decide himself.

[wongck]

That's about the price for a mid-range PC system, but this is for a high-end Atari system.
With that ethernet and USB stuff, should easily justify the price.

[Jookie]

With that ethernet and USB stuff, should easily justify the price.

Yes, but that is usefull only if there is enough of applications and drivers which will use the USB devices and the ethernet connection. The ethernet seems not to be a big problem, but the support for enough various USB devices... well, I don't know... So it's nice that Suska has them, but without the right software it might be useless to you.

[wongck]

With that ethernet and USB stuff, should easily justify the price.

Yes, but that is usefull only if there is enough of applications and drivers which will use the USB devices and the ethernet connection. The ethernet seems not to be a big problem, but the support for enough various USB devices... well, I don't know... So it's nice that Suska has them, but without the right software it might be useless to you.

Hahaha.... yes, correct. Like the EtherNAT?

[Jookie]

Hahaha.... yes, correct. Like the EtherNAT?

Well yes, like EtherNAT and NetusBEE... The Ethernet part is working (got the drivers for that), but the USB part lacks the right software - it now has drivers for a mouse only (if I remember correctly)...

[pterodactyl]

With the apparent claim of STE compatibility - would this run Notator 3.21?

[alexh]

Considering the features and efforts put in this project (and the expected number of units sold) the price is fair.

But Suska is open source and free, you could port it to any other mass produced FPGA board (with capacity) relatively painlessly.

Ahh... but what is this???

http://download.inventronik.de/Suska-Ph ... SC8134.jpg

[djbase]

Thats Suska-III-T, the tiny edition.

[alexh]

I wonder how much that will be.

[xc8]

I wonder how much that will be.

I wonder about the cores (compatibility/support/development etc). I have *real* bad experience from FPGAs, (see: c-one).

[alexh]

The C-One was overpriced and underpowered. Anyone looking at it when it came out who knew anything stayed well clear.

As for core compatibility... 99% of cores are open-source. The schematics and board-support-wrappers are also open-source. It is very simple to port them. 2-3 days work maximum.

The only hard bit is porting the FDC/HD emulation interface which usually varies so widely between boards it is unbelievable.

Compatibility... well that is down to the core developers. I've no idea how compatible today's FPGA cores are, but I see some good results for Spectrum, Amstrad, C64, MSX2, BBCB, Apple II, various arcade games etc.

[djmitman]

with (it seems) no more CT-63s available - the market was open for a new atari clone compatible. But as some have said I think some tricks were missed here - for example - PCI slots or similar for expansion, CT-63 style expansion, compatibility with supervidel, etc.
I was hoping for a price close to minimig - would have snapped their hands off then - but at 600+ euros?????
If you look at other offerings, e.g. SAM440, coldfire much more powerful, more expansion capabilities, and lower (or equivalent costs) Maybe the FPGA is too powerful for this purpose?
I hope they do produce a suska-T, and that it is at minimig prices - but I think this is too rich for all but (hardware) developers. Lets hope they sell some and get their investment back

[xc8]

The C-One was overpriced and underpowered. Anyone looking at it when it came out who knew anything stayed well clear.

As for core compatibility... 99% of cores are open-source. The schematics and board-support-wrappers are also open-source. It is very simple to port them. 2-3 days work maximum.

The only hard bit is porting the FDC/HD emulation interface which usually varies so widely between boards it is unbelievable.

Compatibility... well that is down to the core developers. I've no idea how compatible today's FPGA cores are, but I see some good results for Spectrum, Amstrad, C64, MSX2, BBCB, Apple II, various arcade games etc.

The c-one has an extender FPGA (cyclone III EP3c25E144) and the only improvements are the minimig core and some additional features for c64.

There are still problems like the video output, some monitors are work with it some not.
(I don't remember how many different monitors I tested to work with this...)

[alexh]

I was hoping for a price close to minimig - would have snapped their hands off then

1) Minimig 1.1 was too expensive.
2) MiniMig 1.1 will almost certainly run Suska. All it is going to take is someone with a few days free to work on it.