MiST - Amiga ST FPGA + intro

On Thu, 31 Mar 2016, ethan at 757.org wrote: It's an "FPGA computer" it's hyper-neat, if you ask me. :-) He's got all kinds of interesting little hardware bits. It stokes a bit of nostalgia for the 90's when there was all manner of strange dohickeys and frodads for sale for Amigas and STs. I was too poor to buy any of it, or an SGI of my own. I think when you have geek lust for something as a kid or teen, but can never get your hands on it, it makes it even more "special" to you as an adult (where other folks just see some old obsolete junk). I got a deal on mine for $1000 about two years ago. The owner didn't think the machine was in working condition. It turns out it was a decked out full-quad rig that came from a California special effects house. It wouldn't post or boot. I knew I could sell the CPU boards alone for more than $1k, so I bought it. As it turned out, the only problem was that someone had juggled the boards on the system as they decommissioned it (probably to remove a special board the still wanted), and in so doing didn't properly re-seat everything. At the time, similar systems were going for $4k to $10k on ebay. I've had an Indigo and I've worked on Octanes quite a bit but never had one of my own. The problem with both of them (and my Tezro) is how huge and loud they are. If I ever buy a house, I'm going to modify a closet to put this crap into so I don't have to hear it. That's the main thing that holds me back from using them more. I use my Indys more than my O2 or my Tezro because of the noise. Still, the Tezro can do full HD (1920x1080) graphics in 24 bit color. It also has a DVI interface that doesn't require a special 13W3 monitor or huge 13W3 -> VGA sync-on-green adapter or a special keyboard & mouse like the Indigo (which is a wonderful design, otherwise). Mine doesn't. I'm on Nekochan.net quite a bit and I don't see any chronic issues with the Tezro power supplies. However, I can confirm the issues with the Fuel. Fortunately, there are pretty easy hacks to replace the PS on a Fuel. I've got mixed feelings about the Fuel, but it's still a fun machine. If it wasn't for the noise, the O2 would probably be my favorite. It's one of those completely designed-from-scratch true hardware-Unix-workstations with some neat ideas (like the ICE co-processor and the outstanding A/V option). The unified memory architecture of the O2 was also really neat. The first time I saw someone use an O2 to super-smooth zoom down on a 16000x16000 satellite image I was very impressed. -Swift