[HN Gopher] Amiga 2000 - Codename: Tesseract (2021)
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Amiga 2000 - Codename: Tesseract (2021)
Author : z303
Score : 106 points
Date : 2024-07-15 20:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (retrohax.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (retrohax.net)
| actionfromafar wrote:
| This Tesseract project is such an interesting study in what it
| takes to build a computer from scratch.
|
| I think Amigas occupy such a cool middle ground between eminently
| _discoverable_ - one can learn how _everything_ works in them -
| while at the same time, with a heap of extra RAM and a faster CPU
| - you can run an almost modern _desktop_ _environment_ on them,
| including development environment.
| richardw wrote:
| And these machines were originally built at a time when
| everything was simpler. We're like space aliens arriving from
| the future, applying our advanced tech to build an old human
| relic. A couple motivated people can do it.
|
| 30 years from now: "HardwareGPT, make me an Amiga but with ZX
| Spectrum keys"
| qingcharles wrote:
| "Yes, the rubber ones!"
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I think there is an opportunity to use modern
| microcontrollers to created a similar simplified environment.
| The lack of a virtualizing mmu constrains ram sizes, which in
| turn constrains the degree of abstraction level bloat that
| otherwise occurs. Like living in a tiny house, everything
| must earn its continued place. That enables the
| understandability we remember. And a modern microcontroller
| has about the same memory as an amiga 1k while using a tiny
| fraction of the power for several times the processing
| capability.
|
| I suppose we could just use contikiOS, it has a browser of
| sorts even. But I think the thread model that allows
| premptive threads has some footguns to adopt as a general
| desktop system, and a browser for these systems needs a more
| elegant way to handle web pages that are several times its
| ram size than just grabbing text.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| We _are_ like space aliens from the future :)
|
| Still, it's amazing to me that we can build stuff which is
| vaguely comparable to our current commercial capabilities.
|
| Another similar observation... I loaded an LLM (local
| llama.cpp) on a 2015 laptop, almost a decade old, and had a
| coherent "conversation" with it.
|
| If someone had time-travelled back in 2015 and started for me
| that very same program on the same laptop in 2015, it would
| have been confusing and downright _scary_. I would have
| started looking for network connections to the remote _super
| computer_ which surely must be running this thing...
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I suspect that if I had the time, I could create a desktop from
| scratch, but I now believe it would take more years than I have
| left, and it would be less fun than I want anyway.
| tivert wrote:
| > This Tesseract project is such an interesting study in what
| it takes to build a computer from scratch.
|
| But it's not really from scratch. IIRC, Amiga's used a lot of
| custom ICs, and it looks like those were scavenged for this
| project.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| The Amiga custom chips are still simple enough that their
| functionality can be easily understood and emulated in
| software or FGPAs (arguably, they're conceptually simpler
| than the C64 VIC-II and SID custom chips).
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Every time I read something like this I remember back to
| the alt groups and people talking about the impossibility
| of emulation at all (if ever) of an amiga. What I find
| interesting about emulation is the amount of 'slop' that
| many programs can endure. Where the emulation is not quite
| right or even downright missing or wrong yet the program
| chugs along and just sort of works. Now some stuff needs
| that but it is kind of rare. Which is interesting.
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| A true labor of love - much respect!
|
| I owned an Amiga 2000 back in the day and learned the C
| programming language on it.
| icedchai wrote:
| Similar here! I learned C on an Amiga 500, Lattice C (renamed
| to SAS/C)...
| ahonhn wrote:
| I had SAS/C which came on 5 or 6 floppies and my A2000 had no
| hard disk at the time so compiling meant lots and lots of
| disk swapping and I used the RAM Disk a lot. Later, for a
| princely sum I recall being over a grand, I got a SCSI
| controller card and a massive 40mb hard drive which made the
| process so much more pleasant.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I crammed DICE C on a single floppy (or RAM disk!? can't
| remember) on an Amiga 500 tricked out with a full megabyte
| of RAM. :-D
| agentultra wrote:
| I too was and Amiga 500 nerd. Where I learned assembler and
| C.
| transfire wrote:
| Wow!
| DaoVeles wrote:
| When you see projects like this from start to finish you get to
| appreciate both how they used to squeeze so much out of the
| hardware, but also just how efficient our modern computers are in
| terms of materials.
|
| I mean a Raspberry Pi Zero would run circles around this thing
| and that is awesome but it also loses a little of the charm at
| the same time.
| buescher wrote:
| What's sort of neat with a Raspberry Pi - as far as
| retrocomputing - is that you can run RISC/OS, the operating
| system for the Acorn Archimedes, which was the first ARM
| computer and sort of the British Amiga. On real ARM hardware,
| even. I haven't figured out a _use_ for that, but it 's so
| cool.
| larodi wrote:
| Love the comment at the end :
|
| Nobody donates anything. so don't bother. Looks like only
| Youtubers get all goodies LOLOL ;P
|
| ----
|
| This guy so honest. Which adds bonus parts to his already
| incredible magic.
| thesuavefactor wrote:
| Really loved the Amiga, and used it way past its supposed
| expiration date. I really think if it wasn't for commodores
| mismanagement, this computer would have a lot more potential than
| Macs or PCs nowadays.
| nickt wrote:
| You might be interested in the recently announced Kickstarter
| which explores what might have been if Commodore hadn't
| suffered from extraordinary management incompetence. It's based
| on plans the actual people had at the time and seems like a fun
| read.
|
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/daretodreamhardback/dar...
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