Hi,

> I am curious if the owners of this project have thought about the
> posibility of doing a stand alone board with a coldfire processor
> and a PCI slot, much like the PPC equipped Efika board.
> With the recently released MCF54455 I think it should be relatively
> easy to implement such a design.

I have thought it would be a cool board and a great project but I
have not attempted such a thing, mainly because its not something I
could assemble (large bga's etc) and the PCB companies I use are not
able to do via's small enough for navigating out of the high density
BGA components.
But yes, the V4e Coldfires would be perfect for a Efika type board, I
agree totally.

> I know you must be thinking "but it would not be able to run
> Amiga Software". That is why a PCI slot would be important.
> If a coldfire machine were available maybe you can convince
> Individual Computers to release a PCI card with FPGA that
> includes their amiga chipset implementation
> and maybe a 68000 and/or 68EC020 core.

Firstly thats a computer on a stick and may as well be in a PC :) and
secondly you cant stick the Amiga custom chipset on a PCI slot, the
addresses the software calls would all be wrong. (unlike, as you say,
you put the whole Amiga on the same PCI card)
That said, the best classic Amiga uses a voodoo graphics card and
workbench 3.9 and that would require no custom Amiga parts, hence
making the Amiga cheap.
You could even contact Amiga directly for a licence to port OS3.9, I
think they need the income. :)

> Also if a coldfire machine was finally available it would certainly
> increase the interest in fianlly implenting the AROS Kickstart
> ROM Replacement bounty since once it is done for the 68k,
> recompilation into coldfire should be quick and painless.

Yes, if Amiga said "no thanks" to porting 3.9 then the AROS bounty
would be a great way to go.

So basically I love the idea but its beyond what I can do at the
moment.

Oliver Hannaford-Day
Group Owner