New Atari compatible computer FireBee in series production

[Mathias]

As many of you may have noticed, we´ve been working hard to start the Atari Coldfire Project again last year. We are proud to announce now, that our first series is in production. The multilayer PCBs and sourcing will be done by 4th of June. Beginning on the 8th of June, the first FireBee series will be produced. Please visit our homepage to get detailed informations: http://acp.atari.org .

 

You can - of course - still order a FireBee.

Edited May 23, 2010 by Mathias

[anzac]

As many of you may have noticed, we´ve been working hard to start the Atari Coldfire Project again last year. We are proud to announce now, that our first series is in production. The multilayer PCBs and sourcing will be done by 4th of June. Beginning on the 8th of June, the first FireBee series will be produced. Please visit our homepage to get detailed informations: http://acp.atari.org .

 

You can - of course - still order a FireBee.

 

 

interesting project... would love to have one, but just wayyyy out of my pocket though...

 

wish the best success for this...

[+poobah]

As many of you may have noticed, we´ve been working hard to start the Atari Coldfire Project again last year. We are proud to announce now, that our first series is in production. The multilayer PCBs and sourcing will be done by 4th of June. Beginning on the 8th of June, the first FireBee series will be produced. Please visit our homepage to get detailed informations: http://acp.atari.org .

 

You can - of course - still order a FireBee.

 

 

interesting project... would love to have one, but just wayyyy out of my pocket though...

 

wish the best success for this...

 

Wouldn't mind one either, but $750 or so plus shipping, eeek!

[Havok69]

Very cool - I hope everything comes to fruition. Any mockups of the final product you'd care to post?

[Mathias]

Hi all. Thanks for the kind words.

 

About the price, I know it´s not cheap, but please consider following points:

 

-) It is the cheapest clone ever

-) We got the huge FPGA onboard which is 120 Euro each

-) Small series are never cheap. We cannot compare to PC market as we do not produce 50k units up.

-) Noone of the team is earning money. We did everything for free to lower the price as much as possible.

 

 

Edited May 24, 2010 by Mathias

[AtariSociety]

Hi all. Thanks for the kind words.

 

About the price, I know it´s not cheap, but please consider following points:

 

-) It is the cheapest clone ever

-) We got the huge FPGA onboard which is 120 Euro each

-) Small series are never cheap. We cannot compare to PC market as we do not produce 50k units up.

-) Noone of the team is earning money. We did everything for free to lower the price as much as possible.

 

 

 

Curious what kind of warranty comes with the board?

 

Thomas

[Mathias]

Curious what kind of warranty comes with the board?

 

Of course Medusa Computer Systems is granting the normal european 2-years warranty, as every other product got.

[anzac]

Hi all. Thanks for the kind words.

 

About the price, I know it´s not cheap, but please consider following points:

 

-) It is the cheapest clone ever

-) We got the huge FPGA onboard which is 120 Euro each

-) Small series are never cheap. We cannot compare to PC market as we do not produce 50k units up.

-) Noone of the team is earning money. We did everything for free to lower the price as much as possible.

 

 

 

Hi Mathias,

 

i understand your arguments, i really do. i admit that it might be the cheapest clone ever and that people are dedicating their time and effort without finantial gain.

 

what pains me, is being unable to help you in this project because the price tag is simply out of my reach. i don´t mind making a donation of 20, 30 or 50€, but spending almost 1000€ unless i win the lottery is never going to happen.

 

also, i think the ACP site could be much improved. there is a lot of information about the firebee, but there is not practical information on how to use this. it´s to use inside a PC case? then all the connectors would be inside? also, marking the PIN_1 on the different IDE, SCSI, ACSI, floppy connectors on the PCB would have been a plus. maybe i didn´t see it on the picture or maybe it was just the prototype, but it´s something that is easy to do and helps people plugging cables.

[Mathias]

i understand your arguments, i really do. i admit that it might be the cheapest clone ever and that people are dedicating their time and effort without finantial gain.

Thank you. That is realy important to understand what we do. I think it was the only chance for a native Atari compatible computer.

 

what pains me, is being unable to help you in this project because the price tag is simply out of my reach. i don´t mind making a donation of 20, 30 or 50 Euro, but spending almost 1000 Euro unless i win the lottery is never going to happen.

As i wrote at atari.org you could start to save some money, as our computer shall be availaible. You could prepare for getting on at the end of next year? Neverthless donations are also welcome. Just contact us if you like.

 

also, i think the ACP site could be much improved. there is a lot of information about the firebee, but there is not practical information on how to use this.

You are right. But we are estill in the proceess of doing the basis softwaredesign, and making the computer usable. So please wait some more weeks. Final "Product Page" shall be at http://www.firebee.org (webdesigners and databasegurus are welcome).

 

also, marking the PIN_1 on the different IDE, SCSI, ACSI, floppy connectors on the PCB would have been a plus. maybe i didn´t see it on the picture or maybe it was just the prototype, but it´s something that is easy to do and helps people plugging cables.

You didn´t see it. Even at the prototypes there is a small green sqare printed at the board at every connector right beside PIN_1 look at this picture http://acp.atari.org/images/foto2.jpeg Edited May 24, 2010 by Mathias

[AtariSociety]

What is the dimensions of this PC Board? Just curious as I own a NeXTcube, basically a 12" Cube, inside dimensions probably max length of PC Board would be 10" or so, maybe 11". I have this vision of installing the FireBee in my Cube and use that as the case. 8-)

 

tj

[Mathias]

What is the dimensions of this PC Board?

 

The board itselve is exactly 260mm x 90mm that is 10,236" x 3,543" but you have to add the connectors which are bigger as the board, and the battery, as the PCI connector. So it could maybe be small enough, or you could put the battery at another place? As soon as the Firebee is ready after production we will provide an better plan with every dimensioning.

 

Edited May 25, 2010 by Mathias

[Kalvan]

1. Will that board fit in a Mini-ATX case?

 

2: What sort of printers will be supported?

 

3: Was the Motorola 56000 replaced by a 96000 or a StarCore? Or was it simply reved up by the chipset FPGA to match the ColdFire CPU?

 

4: For FireBee II, might I suggest one of the newer varieties of FPGA for any new chipsets and features (Like say, support for PCI Express x1, x2, x4, and/or x16, upgrading the audio to a Yamaha YMF {or even an AMY}, and Blu-Ray playback with a BD-ROM Drive) with say, an Achronix Speedster (way faster speed than just 200Mhz), TierFPGA (relatively painless transition to an ASIC if volumes get high enough), or Tabula ABAX (effectively exttremely dense at standard FPGA speeds, but may have drawbacks in power consumption).

 

5: 12 watts may be rather higher than your original goal, but it is well within industry standard for laptop computers, and your motherboard design is remarkably compact. Would a laptop version be completely out of the question? If you could make one for less than $1,000, then baring unforseen financial emergencies, I don't think I could be able to refuse so long as it had the standard card readers, earphone jack, and at least a DVD-ROM drive.

[Kalvan]

Wait a minute, you said that the DSP and Blitter still needed work. When you've finished with them, please let us know as soon as possible.

[Mathias]

1) Yes the board will fit in several Mini-ATX cases. You just have to look for one with full PCI slot.

 

2) There was nothing done for Printers. What your software can do now (e.g. NVDI), will also be possible. If maybe the guys get along with the partially released MiNT 98 we could have a chance to get every PostScrip network printer working.

 

3) The 56001 is under construction and a 1:1 mapping inside the FPGA

 

4) There are no plans for a FireBee II recently. And your ideas about x16 PCI Express, Blu-Ray etc are not real, are they?

 

5) Power, well let´s see what will be possible by software. Laptop, let´s see.

 

And of course I will inform you when a further step at FPGA configuration is done.

[sven86]

Hey, I read that from the production, only 24 of the boards were good. Out of how many?

[lp060]

Hey, I read that from the production, only 24 of the boards were good. Out of how many?

 

I'd not worry about the numbers. The important thing is the company has a good warranty and the people who bought boards will get them. Just a little late perhaps.

[sven86]

Hey, I read that from the production, only 24 of the boards were good. Out of how many?

 

I'd not worry about the numbers. The important thing is the company has a good warranty and the people who bought boards will get them. Just a little late perhaps.

 

Perhaps. I just don't want it to turn out like the Pandora handheld, where people had to wait for over two years to get the thing.

[+Gemintronic]

Well, all in all if it's under $1000 for a complete alternative PC they're doing pretty good.

 

Take a look at the other options for an alternative PC:

 

$911.18 for a SAM Flex Complete System. 733Mhz PowerPC Amiga OS 4

Pros: Amiga software is nice. Cons: Will be left in the dust after X10000 comes out.

 

$300 Used Mac Mini 1.4ghz PPC + $144.53 MorphOS license

Pros: FAST. Cheap. Cons: MorphOS purchasing and registration sucks. License tied to machine.

 

For a real Atari ST system that can run real software FireBee seems pretty good.

Edited July 27, 2010 by theloon

[sven86]

Well, all in all if it's under $1000 for a complete alternative PC they're doing pretty good.

 

Take a look at the other options for an alternative PC:

 

$911.18 for a SAM Flex Complete System. 733Mhz PowerPC Amiga OS 4

Pros: Amiga software is nice. Cons: Will be left in the dust after X10000 comes out.

 

 

It would leave the Sam Flex to dust but will people buy it, since it will be 1500 pounds? I have a friend who is a bigger die-hard Amigan than I am and he scoffed at it.

 

The Firebee is a bargain compared to the rest of the NG machines.

[sven86]

I don't know if any of you know, but there is a YouTube video of the new Firebee

 

[pinkstone]

Great!!! How about to put the Firebee on a Microbox case? I´d buy it in a breeze...

 

:)

[sven86]

Great!!! How about to put the Firebee on a Microbox case? I´d buy it in a breeze...

 

:)

 

Well somebody left a comment on YouTube saying he was willing to make a case for it.

[pinkstone]

Great!!! How about to put the Firebee on a Microbox case? I´d buy it in a breeze...

 

:)

 

Well somebody left a comment on YouTube saying he was willing to make a case for it.

 

Not me! I´m very excited about another project (7800XM) using an almost Atari design so I can dream about this...

 

 

:lust: :lust:

Edited September 3, 2010 by pinkstone

[sven86]

Great!!! How about to put the Firebee on a Microbox case? I´d buy it in a breeze...

 

:)

 

Well somebody left a comment on YouTube saying he was willing to make a case for it.

 

Not me! I´m very excited about another project (7800XM) using an almost Atari design so I can dream about this...

 

 

:lust: :lust:

 

What the heck is that?

[pinkstone]

Great!!! How about to put the Firebee on a Microbox case? I´d buy it in a breeze...

 

:)

 

Well somebody left a comment on YouTube saying he was willing to make a case for it.

 

Not me! I´m very excited about another project (7800XM) using an almost Atari design so I can dream about this...

 

 

:lust: :lust:

 

What the heck is that?

 

It was probable successor of the Falcon 030. Here it´s the link: http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/falcon030/microbox/index.htm