Thread
New Apple IIgs
Me and my friend are considering making an Apple IIgs using an FPGA. The deciding factor will be if anyone is interested. So...tell me! :beige: The thing should be pretty cheap because almost everything will be implemented on the FPGA. It will be very similar to the minimig (FPGA implementation of an Amiga 500). A PIC microcontroller will act as a sort of BIOS. In the sense that it will load the FPGA's files (the FPGA is RAM-based) and that it will perform on-the-fly disk image (HD and Floppy) conversion. It will be maxed out on RAM and include a built-in excelerator so you won't have to worry about buying that. Also an SD/MMC slot will be included which will hold the firmware, the HD image files, and the floppy image files. All of the ports on the Apple IIgs will be included. We might be able to include IDE and Ethernet, however that might be kind of complicated because "fake" cards will have to be written in Verilog. Unless of course we could implement the designs already in existence. Also it will include a working Apple //e, as it that already been implemented. The final version will be in a portable form factor. If you have any requests or questions just reply to this post.
**DISCLAIMER**
I am NOT making any promises, so don't say I am. This may or may not happen. It depends or the amount of interest and other factors (i.e. my personal life
). I hope it will happen though!
**DISCLAIMER**
I am NOT making any promises, so don't say I am. This may or may not happen. It depends or the amount of interest and other factors (i.e. my personal life
). I hope it will happen though!I have both a IIgs and an Amiga 500, so I would not want an emulated version of either.
The CommodoreOne (c64 emulater in FPG) never panned out, and was a bit pricey so few purchased one.
The concept of a new and better system is interesting but when the original equipment is still plentiful and cheap I don't see too many people wanting to rush out and buy one. Sure being able to use a new monitor is nice, but you lose a bit of the old school look that way as well. Plus few people would use the extra speed for anything usefull.
The CommodoreOne (c64 emulater in FPG) never panned out, and was a bit pricey so few purchased one.
The concept of a new and better system is interesting but when the original equipment is still plentiful and cheap I don't see too many people wanting to rush out and buy one. Sure being able to use a new monitor is nice, but you lose a bit of the old school look that way as well. Plus few people would use the extra speed for anything usefull.
You did not mention anything about video out? Could it connect ot a LCD ?
On the excellerator would the speed be adjustable to suit the software? What speeds are we talking about?
Not that much familar with the FPGA. I am sure alot have not much of an Idea of what it is.
You did not mention what cheap is? Nobody will hold you to it. But a starting point might help.
Take Care
On the excellerator would the speed be adjustable to suit the software? What speeds are we talking about?
Not that much familar with the FPGA. I am sure alot have not much of an Idea of what it is.
You did not mention what cheap is? Nobody will hold you to it. But a starting point might help.
Take Care
How portable would this be? Could it be hooked up to a PSOne LCD? Also as Twilight Rodent asked what price are we talking about as far as "cheap"? I have a ROM 01 GS plus the motherboard for a ROM 03 but the idea of a portable GS sounds good if it could be done.
Dean
Dean
Sorry, I didn't list all of the features. I wrote that right before I went to bed 
. When I say portable I mean like the size of a newton. Hopefully it will include a screen but probably not to keep cost down. Also it should cost around $75 because the only main components are the FPGA and the PIC controller. However it might be less, I don't know.
. When I say portable I mean like the size of a newton. Hopefully it will include a screen but probably not to keep cost down. Also it should cost around $75 because the only main components are the FPGA and the PIC controller. However it might be less, I don't know.Well thanks for the support. We have decided upon a device that is like a Commodore 64-everything's in the keyboard. The mouse will be a trackball on the keyboard. It should inlcude all the of the ports on the original. We havent finished the desing but were hoping it will cost less than $80
Keyboard and mouse, as I'm sure you know, will increase the cost. I'd be interested in your original idea, up to $100. If it had a keyboard and mouse built it, I guess I'd be more critical of the form factor and design before I could commit. I mean, either I'd fall in love with it or I wouldn't. I can't stand crap keyboards, so that's always a concern.
Any chance of USB for HID? Mass-storage? RCA video out would be nice, especially if it's portable. Battery powered?
Nathan
Any chance of USB for HID? Mass-storage? RCA video out would be nice, especially if it's portable. Battery powered?
Nathan
I think that this is an excellent project which is implementable because it can use a lot of existing research and emulation techniques. I have to question cost: assembly costs are non-trivial, and you need to add in the cost of physical connectors for mouse, keyboard, video (multiple outputs?), flash drives.
Don't use physical ADB connectors. PS/2 is much more common.
But, yeah, I'll buy one.
Don't use physical ADB connectors. PS/2 is much more common.
But, yeah, I'll buy one.
Thanks for all of the support! We are probably going to end up making two systems in the end. However to get our foot in the door, we will be making the first one a box with two PS/2 ports, Ethernet, USB, VGA, MMC/SD and some other stuff. More updates will come later. However the proccesor core has already been started. Well as in, I downloaded the source code to an incomplete core that was given up on on 2002. I don't think too much was done to it though :'( .
No, it will be in a case don't worry. But I was thinking, what do you guys think is the best option for Ethernet? Should I emulate a modem then route the Ethernet to it or should I create and ethernet card through the FPGA? Didn't it take that guy who created the Uthernet card like 3 years to make it? And I can't just copy his design.
Sorry, but I hate it. I like the real thing, if I am going to do emulation then I would not even bother spend money on an Apple II gs and use the emulator for the PC. That is exactly the same thing I said towards the C64 that I bought, Amiga 1200 that I spend money on it and now the Apple II gs. Sorry. Unless you are adding cards for the Apple II gs that provide faster CPU yet still maintaining original speed for software compatibility, or enhance other features to allow running System 7+ software up in an environment of Apple II gs, etc then there is no point for me to spend on this.
I respect your opinion and agree that I also prefer the real Apple IIGS to any sort of emulator. Having said that, I also am intrigued by the idea of an Apple IIGS that I can take with me. I have looked at the website on hacking a real GS into a portable version but it stops after talking about the disk drive. Without any other info to go on it would be hard for me to try and do this myself.
Dean
So in the long run it simply comes down to a matter of taste. At home I'll take the real GS, but since there is no portable version of our beloved GS something like this will have to do.
Dean
] ]'> Also I am adding a Poll to see whether or not its a good idea. For those of you who don't know too much techinical stuff : yes, the idea is to put it on a single chip.Here is my curious question. Why not develop cards also for Apple II gs expansions slots to give it improvements and additional features? Think of it as us little children who like to use the seven slots like a lego game or customizing our favorite robot with additional features but in this case the robot is an Apple II gs.
I have been asked that. But no no that was not me that did that. I only bought out collections that were in the hundereds. Althought I might resemble these people.
This may be a new mental disorder in the years to come. A subset of OCD which will be the OCCD where computer is one of the Cs.
Take Care
There are schematics somewhere on the web. I found them somewhere, I just forget where. I think they were somewhere on apple2.org.za. Check all the mirrors, you'll find it eventually. Maybe someone could use these to build a working FPGA based 65832 for use in a homemade "Apple IIGS /e" running at 20 Mhz, with a working Rom 04 and 4MB of RAM. What would be really neat is if someone reverse engineered GS/OS and made a 32 bit version with Quicktime, 32768 color mode, native CD support, and some of the more tantalizing features of Apple's cancelled Copland OS.
This post kinda makes me wonder what kind of unspeakable rockage would occur if there were a Coldfire-style update to the 65xx series. the thought of running a 100 Mhz Apple IIGS makes me drool...
There was a Terbium 32-bit 6502 successor from Western Design Center. But of course, it got canceled. There have been a few hobbyist attempts to create 32-bit 6502s, but with no luck. I'm not sure how, but perhaps we could take the 65832 design and speed it up somehow. Does anyone know how a processor is sped up? Someone talked in another post about how FreeScale could easily speed up the 68040 with enough work to 800mhz.
The problem about just scaling processor speed up on stuff like this is that most of the old computers were dependent on the speed of the processor being consistent.. I'm not sure if the Apple II was but it wouldn't be surprising to me.
Plus, a lot of the applications (read: games) were dependent on that 1mhz or 2.8mhz processor speed, depending on whether you were in Apple II mode or IIgs accelerated mode, and they definitely wouldn't run too well on something 100x/30x the speed.
Plus, a lot of the applications (read: games) were dependent on that 1mhz or 2.8mhz processor speed, depending on whether you were in Apple II mode or IIgs accelerated mode, and they definitely wouldn't run too well on something 100x/30x the speed.
Well, yes they did depend on the speed. But that is why the IIGS has an underclocking feature built into it. We could call it the Apple IIfx (yeah and sell it for $10k!). What I wonder is, how fast computers would be if they had remained stagnant in speed, then the proccesor speed was greatly increased. Just imagine how fast everything would be! The problem with current computers is that the speed doesn't increase to the user, because as the machine is sped up, the software gets more bloated. Anyway, the tricky part would be the OS. We could always compile NetBSD or something for it, but that wouldn't be anything special. The problem is that from what I have heard, the GS/OS is somewhat complicated. It has a toolbox and everything just like the mac did. A great deal of reverse engineering would have to happen. However, if the goal of this is to get BSD or Linux or something to run on a 32-bit 6502, then I'm out, that is no fun. Just some thoughts
.... a 64-bit 6502, now there's something worth looking at.
Seriously though, I am intrigued by, and I'd even go as far as to say I like the idea of the IIgs clone. What it sounds like to me is the best thing to try to do is to make it something accessible to as many people as possible. Up to about $100 for something that's a complete starter kit into the world of IIgs would be pretty nice. Especially if you got the rights to distribute some software with it, one or two different variations of the operating system (GS/OS 6 with hypercard, and prodos, at the very least)
The biggest most-important things would be that it's a fairly small box in moderately attractive (not really ugly) packaging, and I think it's moderately important to include basically the same ports as the original IIgs (although the funky monitor port could be swapped out for VGA)
Then you could look at building in the functionality of some of the more fancy cards, for example, by emulating a scsi addon card and including a Compact Flash slot.
But I don't know if it's really worthwhile trying to redesign the platform, or add so many things like Ethernet, especially in the first version of the box.
For what it's worth, I've always been interested in whether or not anyone would try to do a 68k Mac clone. I'm sure it's been talked about, but I'm also sure the legal issues prevent it from making any progress.
Seriously though, I am intrigued by, and I'd even go as far as to say I like the idea of the IIgs clone. What it sounds like to me is the best thing to try to do is to make it something accessible to as many people as possible. Up to about $100 for something that's a complete starter kit into the world of IIgs would be pretty nice. Especially if you got the rights to distribute some software with it, one or two different variations of the operating system (GS/OS 6 with hypercard, and prodos, at the very least)
The biggest most-important things would be that it's a fairly small box in moderately attractive (not really ugly) packaging, and I think it's moderately important to include basically the same ports as the original IIgs (although the funky monitor port could be swapped out for VGA)
Then you could look at building in the functionality of some of the more fancy cards, for example, by emulating a scsi addon card and including a Compact Flash slot.
But I don't know if it's really worthwhile trying to redesign the platform, or add so many things like Ethernet, especially in the first version of the box.
For what it's worth, I've always been interested in whether or not anyone would try to do a 68k Mac clone. I'm sure it's been talked about, but I'm also sure the legal issues prevent it from making any progress.
My take: this sounds more like a personal project for somebody who wants to learn about a modern technology (e.g. FPGA) by recreating a computer that they love (i.e. the Apple IIgs). It is not really a marketable product.
If someone wants a fast IIgs, all they really need to do is track down a TWGS or Zip GS. Overclock the critter to 8 MHz, and the software will run plenty fast since the software was designed for a CPU 1/3rd the speed. Some people have claimed that they have overclocked these beasts to 18 MHz.
Sure you have the old Apple bus and the old RAM and the old floppy drives and the old serial controller and the old audio synths slowing things down, but if you get rid of all of that you may as well just run a software emulator. It will be faster and cheaper anyway.
If you want to create it, go ahead. Tell us about it too, since I'm sure a lot of us will be excited to hear the details. But at the end of the day, the exciting bit will be that someone did it. Yet the vast majority of us will continue using our real IIgs or an emulator.
If someone wants a fast IIgs, all they really need to do is track down a TWGS or Zip GS. Overclock the critter to 8 MHz, and the software will run plenty fast since the software was designed for a CPU 1/3rd the speed. Some people have claimed that they have overclocked these beasts to 18 MHz.
Sure you have the old Apple bus and the old RAM and the old floppy drives and the old serial controller and the old audio synths slowing things down, but if you get rid of all of that you may as well just run a software emulator. It will be faster and cheaper anyway.
If you want to create it, go ahead. Tell us about it too, since I'm sure a lot of us will be excited to hear the details. But at the end of the day, the exciting bit will be that someone did it. Yet the vast majority of us will continue using our real IIgs or an emulator.
The idea is to create a succesor to the Apple IIGS. I personally like Apple IIfx for the name. The idea is to keep the same design philosophy but speed it up. That means the seven slots, plus the memory expansion slot. For one thing, the memory expansion slot could be upgraded to just be a SIMM slot. The problem is that there is no advanced 6502 compatible 32-bit proccesor. I think the best option would be some sort of RISC CPU and a really fast 65832 (32-bit 6502) for running legacy apps, and still having native compatibility. We could even produce an accelerator for the IIGS, Amiga style to give compatibility with the RISC Apple II apps. I don't know what RISC CPU we should use. But SuperH looks interesting