I recently came across an interesting web site -- www.natami.net.  The
site is dedicated to building an up-to-date version of a Commodore
Amiga computer system.  Now while it could be disputed whether or not
the Amiga's system architecture is still innovative, the idea gave me
pause to consider it in the context of the Apple II.

As I'm sure everyone here knows, Apple dropped the IIE and IIGS and
put all it's efforts into the Macintosh line some twenty years ago.
Still, I would venture to say that the Apple II series has at least as
large a potential fan base as the Amiga ever did.

Given the tremendous strides technology has made in the past several
decades, it should be possible to build a backwards compatible system
with the following features:

+  65832 processor (a 65816 expanded to 32-bits -- planned but never
released by Western Design Center)
+  Much higher clock speeds and corresponding performance increases
+  Support for much larger memory sizes
+  Support for modern peripherals including SATA hard drives and DVD
drives
+  Backwards compatibility for old software provided by hardware
emulation of old, but well-supported hardware such as the Mockingboard
or Omnidisk as well as the ability to run at reduced clock speeds,
etc. (like the IIGS)
+  Backwards compatibility for old low-resolution display modes as
well as modern high-resolution modes
+  Low-cost FPGA-based design

As far as prior work goes, I note that others have already built Apple
II systems on FPGAs, but I can't find anyone who made any serious
attempt to update the technology (while retaining backwards
compatibility).  Check out the following URLs:

+  http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~sedwards/apple2fpga/ (An Apple II+ on
an FPGA)
+  http://www.bytecellar.com/archives/000063.php  (An Amiga on an FPGA
-- just shows that something equivalent to the GS in complexity can be
easily handled by modern FPGAs)

As for the CPU, there are free 6502 FPGA cores at www.opencores.org.
Building a 65816 or 65832 in an FPGA should be pretty straightforward
for someone with the right background -- I note that a number of
American universities offer undergraduate-level courses in which
students design and test a 16 or 32-bit CPU on an FPGA.

Even if such a project was brought to completion, it could not hope to
touch the performance of a modern PC.  However, it would offer a
unique opportunity to run some of the old software titles as well as
to develop new ones that could take advantage of many of the
technological leaps that have taken place in the past several decades,
all at a small fraction of the cost of the original hardware it would
replace.

--
Apple2Freak
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