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Sid2
 
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2011-04-07 12:27:54




Just before Christmas, Commodore teased us with an Intel Atom based Commodore 64 — a regular all-in-one Ubuntu PC in the shape of the classic C64 home computer, which could also boot into a game-playing C64 emulation mode. Now, finally, you can buy one, and you’ll soon be able to get the C64’s little brother, the VIC-20, in the shape of the VIC Pro and VIC Slim.

It’s a cute gimmick, to be sure, and one that would surely sell well if it didn’t cost so much. As it is, there must be a very limited set of customers willing to drop big money on a novelty Ubuntu box.

And anyway, the real nerds will be waiting for Commodore’s next big project: The resurrection of the majestic Amiga, albeit in the shape of a DVD player. These machines will use PC hardware but run “Commodore OS”, a mysterious operating system that will either be awesome or awful. I can’t wait.


More. . .

Rakarin
 
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2011-04-23 05:01:36

Sid2 wrote:

And anyway, the real nerds will be waiting for Commodore’s next big project: The resurrection of the majestic Amiga, albeit in the shape of a DVD player. These machines will use PC hardware but run “Commodore OS”, a mysterious operating system that will either be awesome or awful. I can’t wait.


I'm one of those nerds, though I have only use an Amiga once to play a game at someone else's house.

The Amiga is a separate project, and is totally different hardware. The website is here: http://a-eon.com/ It is a PowerPC based processor, using a successor to the Amiga operating system (I think this one is based on AROS). Unfortunately, "the new Amiga" has been only so many wisps of smoke for so long, but this is looking promising. (There are demo units.) What I find interesting is the Xena / XORO "transputer" co-processor. It is basically a "field-programmable gate array" (FPGA), which means a "programmable" processor. An FPGA is *not* a processor in the "normal" computer sense. They are generally fast and very efficient, and are very versatile, but not robust. You can program one to take input, convert it to the base-ten log, and spit out the answer, and it will do so with great speed... but that's about all it will do. They are not designed to run operating systems except highly specialized microkernels. The best analogy is you virtually "etch" the instructions into the processor itself, and so the processors run fast because that is all it does. (It is not actually "burned", but programmed, and can be re-programmed.)

The Xoro unit is designed to control hardware. It is an integer based processor, and does not have a floating point unit (unless that's changed recently). They can be chained and made to run in parallel, and that way you basically have a massive MIPS processor. If the math is integer, it can be very fast. If it requires floating point, like most BOINC projects, it will slow significantly, but can still benefit from massive parallel processing.

Another point is that the Xena port could potentially have other extension cards that are not Xoro. If the demand is high, and I admit that could be a laughable point, there could be other co-processor cards. Personally, I would be overwhelmed with bliss if a Cell 8i (the "real" Cell processor, not the trimmed-down BBE [Broad Band Engine] in the PS3, though I'd settle) was a co-processor. Since both are PPC based, passing vector code from one to the other should be easy.

There is still grantee these will be available, or about price, but if they do come out, two things are guranteed:

1) Someone will build an OpenBSD port.
2) Someone will port SETI@Home to it.
Rakarin
 
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2011-04-23 05:03:04
last modified: 2011-04-23 05:07:40

Ok... the article posted three times and then gave me some else's signature... Sorry for the clutter.
Rakarin
 
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2011-04-23 05:03:11
last modified: 2011-04-23 05:07:13

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Index :: Gadgets, Games and Gizmos :: Commodore 64 Goes on Sale. Amiga, VIC-20 Coming Soon
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