Minimig anyone?

[EvilDragon]

Every now and then, I tried to find a Minimig for myself (an A500 on an FPGA).


It seems for years the only way to get one is to build one yourself.


I wonder - since it's an Open Hardware project and I've found a good an reliable partner with GC, wouldn't it make sense to mass produce these?


Would anyone of you be interested in it?

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Imho, something less amiga-focused may be more interesting. As fpga can be reflashed, it can be modular.


I think the best idea would be a conventional ARM + FPGA (i dream of it for pandora 2).


About FPGA, better wait for the european space agency model (if it's released to public), because it will not be intentionally flawed for strategic/defense purpose like US ones.


Maybe ask here too ?


http://www.minimig.net/


And some new amiga machine :


http://techreport.com/discussions.x/22676

 

[EvilDragon]

And some new amiga machine :


http://techreport.co...ussions.x/22676

That's no Amiga. That's normal PC within a case that says Amiga.


It's as much Amiga as Android is an iPhone.


And BTW: The MiniMig board supports different cores as well

 

[Linux-SWAT]

^^ yes but if you close your eyes and imagine really strong...


Interesting, so it can be programmed to other thing than amiga ?

 

[ibisum]

I dunno, I don't think the market is really there, ED. It'd be fun for about a hundred people, but not really much potential beyond that ..

 

[milkshake]

im waiting for the Natami myself

though a preconfigured minimig might also tickle my fancy if it comes with a case etc or even in the style of an old emiga with keyboard etc built in

http://www.natami.net

 

[gunni]

I was tempted to buy one a while ago, I remembered Acube https://acube-system...p?page=hardware had had a sale on them but they were out of stock and still are, Vesalia and Amigakit have both been out of stock for a while too.


I'm thinking maybe its something to do with MikeJ's FPGA replay board http://www.fpgaarcade.com/ which has started shipping in small quantities. A1200 core and the possibility of using daughterboards for only 60€ more than the minimig was costing does seem like a better option if you can get your hands on one.


How about a minimig handheld? :lol:


p.s. totally agree with you regarding the so-called new "Amiga" a £80 Wesena HTPC case with x86 innards and an Amiga badge on it is not an Amiga, If I was going to throw that kind of crazy money at a computer I would be more likely to go with the AmigaOne X1000 which at least runs AmigaOS!


Edit: typos

 

[Miner49er]

It would very much depend on how expensive it was as it would probably only get limited use for me and would be more of a novelty item than anything else - after all, Amiga emulation is near-perfect in my eyes.

 

[levi]

Imho, something less amiga-focused may be more interesting. As fpga can be reflashed, it can be modular.I think the best idea would be a conventional ARM + FPGA (i dream of it for pandora 2).

I remember the Microdigital Omega saga to produce a desktop ARM machine with an FPGA for support functions. Predictably it took even longer than the Pandora to make the prototypes and eventually went titsup. Still, I've no doubt if ED was on that project he might finally have a working version ready today, only 10 years late

 

[Ian J]

If it could be made to run AGA stuff I'd get one.

 

[Prometheus]

ED, this is REALLY spooky. Do your dragon-powers involve being some sort of mind-reader, or something?


Yesterday, I was looking for a Minimig myself, as I very much want one, and have done for some time. :lol: (WizardStan can vouch for this, as I briefly mentioned it to him yesterday. )


So, definite interest from me - I'm very interested in properly-functioning reimplemented hardware (clones and the like), especially in cases where dealing with the original hardware is too high-maintenance for my liking (in this case, problems with in-built keyboards, and no apparent availability of optical trackballs are something that puts me off ), and I'd love to have a Minimig to hook up to my TV (and/or my forthcoming monitor for my RPi).


All the better if it's possible to have ECS and AGA functionality, too, and the RAM upgrade that seems to be popular to add to pre-existing boards. Indeed, if it had this, you can consider it a definite sale - though I purchased Amiga Forever, I don't have a machine beefy enough to emulate AGA stuff, and, as I said, I find reimplemented hardware more interesting as far as this sort of thing is concerned.


I gather that they originally cost around £135 to £150-ish, or so. Would your pricing be around this sort of level?

 

[Cas]

As Torpor says, I also do not think the market is there, not when and you can still buy Amiga 1200's and other bits to build Amiga's :-


http://amigakit.leam...products_id=305


Same company sells Minimigs when in stock that is.

 

[Prometheus]

^ I thought that AmigaKit had been out of stock of Minimigs for a while? They certainly didn't have any when I was looking yesterday (or last year).

 

[Cas]

^ I thought that AmigaKit had been out of stock of Minimigs for a while? They certainly didn't have any when I was looking yesterday (or last year).

I did notice that it still states Stock TBA on the Minimig.


Buy yourself a 1200 and do it properly or setup WINUAE on your PC, I run a Classic Workbench on my Mac with two Hard drive files under E-UAE all setup as a 1200, works well, plays the games very well.

 

[Prometheus]

^ I'd really rather avoid hardware with built-in keyboards - I have a habit of wearing them out!


And, as I said, I don't have hardware beefy enough to emulate a 1200. (Nor do I use Microsoft Windows, but there's a Linux version of UAE, anyway.)

 

[Cas]

^ I'd really rather avoid hardware with built-in keyboards - I have a habit of wearing them out!


And, as I said, I don't have hardware beefy enough to emulate a 1200. (Nor do I use Microsoft Windows, but there's a Linux version of UAE, anyway.)

Sorry did not read your above post close enough, you should be able to run emulate a 500 with some extra memory, that will run loads stuff.

 

[Prometheus]

That is true, I can... Not always brilliantly, though. :lol:


I just really love cloned hardware.

 

[gunni]

^ I thought that AmigaKit had been out of stock of Minimigs for a while? They certainly didn't have any when I was looking yesterday (or last year).

as far as I know Amigakit and Vesalia were both selling the minimigs manufactured by Acube, who as I mentioned previously dropped the price briefly and have been out of stock since.


There is also the Chameleon - http://www.vesalia.de/e_chameleon.htm which can run the minimig core, bit more pricey though...

 

[Ze_ro]

For a long time, I was really interested in getting a C-One, thinking that FPGA's would be the end-all, be-all for old computers. Unfortunately, due to hardware bugs and lack of a development scene, it never really got to where I hoped it would. It was also very expensive. All in all, it would have been far easier and more effective to just build a PC and run emulators instead.


The Minimig sort of falls into the same niche.... it's a really neat idea, and I love the idea of what is essentially hardware emulation... but what benefit is there over running UAE on a laptop? Is this any more of a "real" Amiga?

How about a minimig handheld? :lol:

Oh man, the Amiga community would be all over that! Not sure if you could really make it affordable though.


There has been some talk in the Amiga scene about a PowerPC nettop that could run Amiga OS 4... basically it would be a rebranded LimePC Z9 (due to the stupid way their site is designed, I can't link directly to the page I want to. Click on the Right Arrow next to "LimePC N10Y", then on "LimePC Z9" to see the specs). They were talking somewhere in the range of $300-500 (This would include an Amiga OS 4 license), which I would be very open to.


--Zero

 

[PokeParadox]

I would love something like this if the price can be set competitive enough!