MuAmi is dead.
DavidSanders
Posts: 3
After attempting to get people to buy MuAmi Computers for over a year, and selling zero of the 10 produced MuAmi is dead and with it one application of the P8X32A.In the meen time I got wrapped back in to my first love RISC OS. Addmitedly in a large part as a result of the neitive slander in the Amiga world today.So my next applications for the Propeller will be a bit different than before. To bad it took me a long to get three Propellers in perfect sync for the high res high color video.
Comments
What was this? I would have been interested in seeing this.
Jeff
Paul
I kind of trailed off on updating the threads here after the Amiga users began badgering me about what MuAmi is not. They did not seem at all interested in a modern 80% Amiga HW compatible computer because it was done with a MCU and did not use FPGAs or ASICs.
I see this thread now.
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/131239-MuAmi-Amiga-Propeller-fusion-(ECS).
Is more info available?
Price: Two propellers cost less than an FPGA to perform the same operation.
Updatability: The ability to reprogram the HW a lot more simply than could be done with an FPGA, and with out having to reset after a 'soft hardware' update.
It's just as easy to update an FPGA application, and there isn't necessarily much difference in the cost of the total system.
At this time I am working on a simple two core Propeller 2 emulator for RISC OS, on the Raspberry Pi. This so that maybe I can do some development for the Propeller 2 before it is available (I do not have the money to get an Altera DE0 Nano). Though with only 16 GPIO pins available it is going to be limited.
Hehe, sounds like Audio-Phile 'logic' - I can understand that was a niche market in every sense of the word, but perhaps there is more generally useful stuff that you developed, which could be useful to others ?
What was the screen resolution and handling ? How did it compare with (eg) a Prop + SSD1963 ?
I am frequently googling around for Amiga news as well as Propeller news on the web. I have never heard anything about this from any other sources than your threads on this forum.
And you have never showed us anything tangible. So how should any potential customer (like me) even be aware of the existance of a finished product.
To be honest I though nothing came out of the MuAmi thread. It seemed to have been abandoned.
Leon's trolling as usual. He loves to bash the Propeller and talk lots of nonsense about other products ON THE PARALLAX FORUM.
What is wrong with what I said? An FPGA will be a lot faster, and costs about the same. Configuration takes about the same time as programming the Propeller.
Like ahle2 said, we havent seen any acual hardware for this product so im not so sure what kind of parts dave uses. But if I were to design something like this, I would probably go the two propeller route too. It may in fact be about 16 bucks to buy an fpga, bare chip, and it would probably give higher performance. Some of us may not have the money or recources to deal with the fpga though so it is easier to use propeller chips. Im sure david already has a prop plug to program with, along with a decent propeller related skill set. Using a propeller means one would not have to buy new programmers, learn to lay out an fpga, or learn an HDL language. The use of propeller chips also allows one to stick with a good old through hole format too, which is alot more managable for those of us with limited recources. Lastly the fpga may perform better, but maybe the performance isnt needed in this application.
Im a big proponent of other non propeller platforms, I also agree with using the right tool for the right job. But sometimes people limited by recources (i.e money/time/knowlege are all valuable recources) have to make imperfect decisions that just work. If it were me and I needed to implement programmable logic, I would probably buy a xlinix cool runner cpld from seedstudio and learn to use that, study its layout. Then when it came time to implement it in my project maybe I would just use multiple cpld chips, if one was not enough. These chips are a cheap way to learn at 12 bucks for a dev board, and I think a something like a 2 dollar price tag. This is assuming I had the money and tools to design a surface mount board, and have it sent off to be made. This is also assuming I have the time to learn an EDA package to design the board, and learn an HDL on top of it to make it all work. Using two extra propellers instead means I can just solder them in to a protoboard and get to writing my software quickly, saving much time.
Im not saying this is why david used two propellers, nor am I saying people shouldnt use FPGA's, small ARM chips or whatever they want, Im just saying depending on someones circumstances the cost to benefit ratio of using something like an FPGA may be absoultely 0.