Where can I buy it?

[amigaclassicrule]

I am curious this project really interests me. It is like buying a brand new Commodore 64 in steroid and was wondering where can I buy it or if it is not released yet when do you think I can buy and how much would it cost?

[simon]

Hi amigaclassicrule (I like your nick name),

first welcome to our forum.

Right now, it is not possible to buy a Kiwi. You might want to read the thread about a new hardware revision. I started this project to fulfill a dream I had since I was a child. First prototypes were built on experimental PCBs with wire wrap teqchnique. The MC68008 helped to reduce routing work and the PCB footprint as it has an 8 bit databus. After releasing it halfway to the public people asked to buy one (as you just did) which suprised me a bit. Well to make a long story short: There are some minor issues with the prototype so I will have to rework the schematics to release a production ready design. Thus why not altering other things? Some of my personally wishes are

* a bigger 68k CPU (at least a MC68000)
* DMA channels for IDE, ...?
* VRAM which is memory mapped into CPU address space (much like Amigas Chip RAM)

As it is a spare time project I can't really tell you when I will reach my goal. Sometimes I can't work on it for weeks. Then there are weeks tinkering from morning to night. Well, it's really hard to tell.
And: I am always seeking for collaborators to speed up development. So if you are interested...

Simon

[amigaclassicrule]

Love too but I know nothing about hardware engineering ! Sadly I will not be much of help here. The only thing I can do is sprout ideas really. I have couple of ideas which I will throw your way and hope of something will become a reality.

Ideas:

1. Implement the same POWER LED feature from Amiga classic into this system. Meaning the power LED turns off in Mono sound and turns on in stereo. If someone accessing internal memory like the classic Amiga the programmer who is writing their software will be able to make it flash like the HD disk activity but in memory of the same. The power LED flashes when the system crashes like the xBox, xBox 360, PS 2, Amiga classic and based on the number of flashing counts the person can tell what is the error about.

2. Have the ability to go in C64 mode and have ports for C64 peripherals. (Again these ideas, if you feel it is a larger project to implement and not worth it..by all means don't have too!)

3. Have a CPU port where the person can upgrade from original 68000 to 68020, and so forth but have 32 Bit bandwidth instead of 8 bit bandwidth.

4. Ability to install a kickstart ROM from classic Amiga and switch into classic Amiga mode interface using the chip set in this system. Say for example due to the fact that there is an Ethernet port here but the person wants to use wookiechat, or GUI program to access the internet, by switching workbench or something similar they get to enjoy the Ethernet port way better than what I saw in the video. Because my issue, if that is what I have to do to go online then to me that port is useless.

5. Ability to have eternal 3.5" HD and boot from the HD.

6. Max RAM size 32 MB.


Now i am going to revise my ideas: Concerning idea #4 it is not that necessary if the person able to write their own GUI OS and have it installed into the HD that would be super cool. I think this would be the next Commodore 64 if you make it right in my opinion and the library of software would be huge and the sale of the hardware would be high. But instead of idea #4 with kickstart...can you look into Commodore 65 graphics and see if it is better than what this current thing have?? For idea number 2 I think this will only happen if you do indeed plan to implement C64 mode otherwise throw that idea off the garbage.

[simon]

Oh wow, many new ideas.
Well, Kiwi should stay an own computer system. So no compatibility to anything else is planed. So C64 and Amiga modes are out of scope.
The power LED is quite nice though. I Will think about it. There should be a free general purpose IO pin.
Blowing up the databus make the whole design more difficult. Now it is easy to route all signals over the board. With a complete 32 bit bus and the possibility to use CPU cards we end up in a much more complex design like multilayer PCB. I would not try to blow up the system that much. For more computing power I would take modern parts and would probably end up with a sort of RaspberryPi...

A MC68000 is a good thing though. Well changing from 8 to 16 bit nearly every part of the design has to be touched. ATM I have an untested reworked schematic laying around. It just waits for me to test some changes before it goes the next step to the PCB layout.

Simon

[amigaclassicrule]

I will still buy it as a new computer/console. I am all for it... Heck, even if it stays as 68000 only with 10 MB of RAM running at 10 Mhz I will buy it! I am looking forward for awesome games developed for it...I hope this time it will be a console/computer where it is filled with Action/RPG games.

[simon]

Sounds good to me. But you should be patient though. Anyone has to program the games you have in mind. So, if your hardware engeneering capabilities are not good enough maybe your sofware development skills are better?

Simon

[amigaclassicrule]

Yes, I am a programmer.

[simon]

Great! When Kiwi's hardware comes to life, programmers will be needed.

Best regards
Simon