UnAmiga FPGA board

[antoniovillena]

This is a Cyclone IV FPGA (EP4CE22F17C8N ) with 2 addons:
-Main addon: VGA, audio, keyboard, mouse, microSD and joystick 1.
-Secondary addon: joystick 2, buzzer, serial port

Cores availables are: Amiga, PC/XT, TS-Conf, PC-Engine, SPEC256, MSX, Atari 800XL, C64, Jupiter Ace

Price is:
-90 EUR, shipping included to EU
-110 USD, shipping included to the rest of the world

To order send mi a PM.

[uigiflip]

Hi Antonio, is there details on the pi zero setup yet?

[antoniovillena]

Hi Antonio, is there details on the pi zero setup yet?

The connection is throwg 2x5 jtag flat cable and 3 jumper wires: one for 5V, other for TX and the third one for RX. Here you have pictures. The software is not published yet because the guy who make it is working on it.

[uigiflip]

so do use the cable that comes with usb blaster and some jump wires?

do u then need a os for the pi and new core for unamiga?

does pi zwero w work with builtin wifi?

[antoniovillena]

so do use the cable that comes with usb blaster and some jump wires?

do u then need a os for the pi and new core for unamiga?

does pi zwero w work with builtin wifi?

Yes, the cable that comes with usb blaster and 3 jump wires. Yes, there is a custom OS with very fast boot for this pourpose. Yes, the Pi Zero W is better because you don't need USB wifi dongle.

[brunosilva]

hi
there will be a new case for unamiga + Pi0 w?

[Sorgelig]

I understand that original creator of this project enjoy the match/mixing the board to see what can be done at the end. But generally speaking i don't see any advantage of this project. FPGA is a little smaller than on MiST. Many addon boards increasing the price to comparable to MiST one. At the end it's not better than MiST and uses the same problematic VGA output. And you won't be able to use MiST cores - everything should be ported which requires a lot of time.
From my point of view, project should have some advantage to be successful. Here i see many cons comparing to MiST without any pros. Even MiST clones can be found with cheaper price without so many add-ons and fully compatible with existing MiST cores.
You even can find DIY MiST kits today, if you prefer to save more cost and solder it by yourself.

I would suggest to look at Arduino Vidor 4000. Although It has smaller FPGA, smaller SDRAM and smaller MCU, i believe it's possible to make a kind of mini-MiST suitable for most MiST cores. The only thing it needs to add is MicroSD card - and it should be easy to add from existing Arduino shields collection. Everything else should be already on the board. I believe it should be an interesting challenge.

[Sorgelig]

And by the way, unrelated to exactly UnAmiga, but to all other Spanish FPGA projects (including ZXUNO, etc):
You guys use a lot of open source projects, so you HAVE TO release your sources as well. Both UnAmiga and ZXUNO have a lot of ported cores WITHOUT source code.
So, don't disrespect to developers who gave you the sources. Without sources you've downloaded from internet, neither ZXUNO nor UnAmiga would exist.
There cannot be excuses like "my code is not cleaned yet", "it's messy" etc.. Once you provide the core, then provide the source code as well if it's not the core written yourself fully.

This is my main complain to Spanish community.

[uigiflip]

i look upon unamiga has for beginner or starter in fpga computing, since can just start with base board and one hat and then expand has can afford other hat and maybe pi0, i think the mist clones are at same price has MISTer, so don't see point in getting them if can get MISTer which is superior to both unAMigA and MIST

[antoniovillena]

There cannot be excuses like "my code is not cleaned yet", "it's messy" etc.. Once you provide the core, then provide the source code as well if it's not the core written yourself fully.

This is my main complain to Spanish community.

I am totally agree with the open source community and I am would like every core is published for ZXUNO, UnAmiga and other spanish projects in which I participate release the source code, even if it's written from scratch. So you can see in this repository almost all source cores for zxuno were published:

http://svn.zxuno.com/svn/zxuno/cores/
user: guest
pass: zxuno

But I can't do anything other than advise. I am not core developer. In this thread (sorry it's in spanish):
http://www.zxuno.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1512

You can read how I leave the team because people don't respect the Creative Common license about the hardware. Nobody seemed to care about respect license exept me. I follow the open source philosophy for the parts I've participated (hardware, firmware) in my github http://github.com/antoniovillena/zxuno/.

[antoniovillena]

hi
there will be a new case for unamiga + Pi0 w?

No. It fits in the same case.

[antoniovillena]

i look upon unamiga has for beginner or starter in fpga computing, since can just start with base board and one hat and then expand has can afford other hat and maybe pi0, i think the mist clones are at same price has MISTer, so don't see point in getting them if can get MISTer which is superior to both unAMigA and MIST

The pi0 is optional. To load cores from SD because Cyclone IV has no multicore support. But you can flash cores with USB Blaster and PC without the pi0. Yes MiST and MiSTer have more cores and other advantages like USB instead PS/2. But the price is more than double. Here in Spain the UnAmiga costs 80 EUR shipped, complete with case and USB blaster.

[Sorgelig]

I know zxuno repository. Many cores there are without sources. Only binaries.
Sometime ago i wanted to check what they did in CPC core, but found only binaries. Some other cores as well.

It's even not good for the project itself because some potential developer will be distracted by this. For community development it's better to have a github repository, so anyone will be able to fork the sources and later provide the updates as pull requests.
I don't see a reason having ugly svn repository with password. We are in 2018, not in 1998. Things have been changed and SVN left in the past with dinosaurs.

[antoniovillena]

I know zxuno repository. Many cores there are without sources. Only binaries.
Sometime ago i wanted to check what they did in CPC core, but found only binaries. Some other cores as well.

It's even not good for the project itself because some potential developer will be distracted by this. For community development it's better to have a github repository, so anyone will be able to fork the sources and later provide the updates as pull requests.
I don't see a reason having ugly svn repository with password. We are in 2018, not in 1998. Things have been changed and SVN left in the past with dinosaurs.

CPC core is written by McLeod from scratch, so it's not mandatory to publish the source core. However, his intention is to do it in the future. What happened at a given moment is that Next guys were copying things from our core without mention. The copy is easily demonstrable because you can see the same graphics glitches. So McLeod in that moment stop updating zx core and did not publish any of his new CPC core. That was the reason.

About the SVN repository it was because it's a hosting controlled phisically by ours, not by Microsoft. But yes, I am agree that for community development github is better. I have github account.

[Sorgelig]

If the whole core written from scratch (including CPU which i'm really doubt) then of course it's up to author.
If i understand correct, all cores ported to UnAmiga were ported exactly by him - and they are clearly not written by him from scratch.

About the SVN repository it was because it's a hosting controlled phisically by ours, not by Microsoft. But yes, I am agree that for community development github is better. I have github account.

When ZXUNO appeared, Microsoft didn't own github Anyway, i don't see what Microsoft can do here. It's open source - nothing to hide.

[antoniovillena]

Hi
McLeod did not write any core for UnAmiga. The guy who did is jepalza and here is the source code available.

http://www.forofpga.es/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6

[kolla]

The guy who did is jepalza and here is the source code available.

Or are they.

I get the impression that parts of the sources are withheld to avoid "public conflict"?

[desUBIKado]

I get the impression that parts of the sources are withheld to avoid "public conflict"?

You're right, but jepalza has already released 100% sources of his Amiga AGA core. I saw it here yesterday.

[Gehstock]

Next Clone, There are more FPGA boards than developers
http://www.forofpga.es/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=101

[Sorgelig]

Instead of making all these virtually the same boards would be better to make a RPi size board with all major connectors of RPi. And the board would have a success (of course if good support will be provided) as it will fit an thousands RPi cases.

[mattsoft]

Instead of making all these virtually the same boards would be better to make a RPi size board with all major connectors of RPi. And the board would have a success (of course if good support will be provided) as it will fit an thousands RPi cases.

Exactly right on.

A drop-in replacement FPGA board for the RPi would be amazing.

[antoniovillena]

Instead of making all these virtually the same boards would be better to make a RPi size board with all major connectors of RPi. And the board would have a success (of course if good support will be provided) as it will fit an thousands RPi cases.

That was the ZX-Uno original idea:
http://zxuno.speccy.org/

[Sorgelig]

That was the ZX-Uno original idea:
http://zxuno.speccy.org/

i don't know about original idea but result has nothing common with RPi.

[Newsdee]

That was the ZX-Uno original idea:
http://zxuno.speccy.org/

i don't know about original idea but result has nothing common with RPi.

I think he means the size and the connectors. Granted it ended up needing a bit of a case mod, but not a big one.

[antoniovillena]

That was the ZX-Uno original idea:
http://zxuno.speccy.org/

i don't know about original idea but result has nothing common with RPi.

I think he means the size and the connectors. Granted it ended up needing a bit of a case mod, but not a big one.

We use old raspberry pi case because it has RCA connector. But as you said need a bit of case mod.