Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: Portable Amiga anyone??  (Read 10695 times)

Description:

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline picmanTopic starter

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Join Date: Dec 2009
  • Posts: 22
    • Show only replies by picman
Portable Amiga anyone??
« on: December 28, 2009, 11:14:51 PM »
Hi , I new here (first post) so hi to everyone.

I am considering developing a small compact and cheap portable amiga.
I Design PCBs for a living.
Imagine minimig crossed with a PSP.

Specs
------
32MB SDRAM
1.6M gate Spartan 3E FPGA
4.3" Touchscreen LCD
Joystick
Joypad
buttons (start, menu, reset)
ARM 7 MPU with support for FAT 16/32 using a fast 8 bit bus between the fpga and arm, USB mass storage for SDCARD.
Dataflash for storing the roms.
PSP/iphone Battery
TV out
Headphone/speakers
Volume control
Li-po Charger
The 68000 CPU will be integrated into the fpga.

It will also be able to run other IP cores as well, like pacman,defender, vic20, atari st etc...

I am quite happy to design the hardware and draw the PCB, but need some help with porting the HDL over, can you help..

Is anyone interested in such a device or is it just another waste of time???
« Last Edit: December 29, 2009, 12:23:13 AM by picman »
 

Offline skurk

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Dec 2006
  • Posts: 929
    • Show only replies by skurk
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #1 on: December 28, 2009, 11:59:31 PM »
Quote from: picman;535297
Hi , I new here (first post) so hi to everyone.

Hi! :-)

Quote
I am considering developing a small compact and cheap portable amiga.
Imagine minimig crossed with a PSP.

Before we all start barking about this and that.. what is your background?  Hobbyist or professional electronics engineer?

Quote
Is anyone interested in such a device or is it just another waste of time???

I'm just guessing here, but I suppose this will be based on the existing Minimig design?

I can't say much about the market, though.  Since this is a handheld device, I supposed the target audience are gamers (i.e. not me)...
Code 6502 asm or... DIE!!

[C64, C128, A500, A600, A1200, A3000, MBP+Mini, Efika/MOS2.1, Sam440 w/AOS4.1
 

Offline dreamcast270mhz

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: May 2009
  • Posts: 322
    • Show only replies by dreamcast270mhz
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #2 on: December 29, 2009, 12:43:51 AM »
Quote from: picman;535297
Hi , I new here (first post) so hi to everyone.

I am considering developing a small compact and cheap portable amiga.
I Design PCBs for a living.
Imagine minimig crossed with a PSP.

Specs
------
32MB SDRAM
1.6M gate Spartan 3E FPGA
4.3" Touchscreen LCD
Joystick
Joypad
buttons (start, menu, reset)
ARM 7 MPU with support for FAT 16/32 using a fast 8 bit bus between the fpga and arm, USB mass storage for SDCARD.
Dataflash for storing the roms.
PSP/iphone Battery
TV out
Headphone/speakers
Volume control
Li-po Charger
The 68000 CPU will be integrated into the fpga.

It will also be able to run other IP cores as well, like pacman,defender, vic20, atari st etc...

I am quite happy to design the hardware and draw the PCB, but need some help with porting the HDL over, can you help..

Is anyone interested in such a device or is it just another waste of time???

Welcome to the forum, nice to have an enthusiastic user with us. I would love one, but I have a few points of input

-An ambitious project, I wish I knew enough to help.
- I highly recommend looking at amiga.serveftp.com to find the schematics for the various Amiga models for hardware reference.
-Please try to go for RTG CV64/3d, and maybe a more powerful CPU like the 68020? I don't know what help it might be, but check out winuae.net and look at the source code for it, maybe it will help with FPGA coding.
-Good luck and I would buy one IF it was comparable to an NDSi or PSP, PLEASE don't make it look like a PSP, go for the Pandora look.
My machines:
PowerMac G4 MDD 1.5ghz 1.25GB 10.5.8 & MOS 2.7
Mac Mini C2D 10.6.8 2GHz 3GB 250GB HDD
MacBook Retina 16GB 256GB SSD 10.8
iPad 2
Underground Gamer invites (a classic game site) PM

Need a part for a PC or Mac? PM me, I\'ll let you know if I come across it.

OS X trumps Windows on every level.

MorphOS, OS4 and Classic Amiga systems are the only ones who are real \'Amigas\', not that joke AROS or Amiga Forever.
 

Offline mitchd61

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Join Date: Nov 2009
  • Posts: 23
    • Show only replies by mitchd61
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #3 on: December 29, 2009, 01:08:52 AM »
I find something like that extremely interesting and I know a few others that probably would as well. I'm an old school gamer and Amiga user and think your concept is well worth developing. I didn't see any mention of WiFi. Have you considered that? Also I agree with the previous idea of going for a Pandora type look, but perhaps a little sleaker in form. I seem to recall seeing some concept art years ago of a hand-held type of Amiga. If you could find those they might inspire you.
Amiga 500/GVP A530 Turbo
Amiga 600
 

Offline Opus

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Feb 2002
  • Posts: 134
    • Show only replies by Opus
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #4 on: December 29, 2009, 01:24:48 AM »
Hi.  I'd be interested, if the price is right
 

Offline picmanTopic starter

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Join Date: Dec 2009
  • Posts: 22
    • Show only replies by picman
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #5 on: December 29, 2009, 01:28:02 AM »
I do have all the schematics for all the amigas, as well as the source for winuae. I'm not sure weather there is a open core 68020, but because the cpu will be contained within the fpga it should be quicker than the hardware version.
It needs to be cheap. The whole point of the project is to play amiga games (plus others) on a cheap handheld platform. PSP lcds are cheap, SDRAM is cheap, the fpga is around £40 ish, so i would be looking to bring it home for less than £100. I know its more than the cost of an amiga 600 on ebay, but they are getting few and far between, and are not portable.
I also want this device to play defender, pacman, frogger, etc all the games i loved playing when i was a kid. I have owned most amigas and still have 4 a500's 2 a500+'s 1 a600, 2 1200's plus loads of stuff to go with them. But i want to enjoy the games sitting in my armchair without wires.
There are other options to acomplish the same thing, but is not as much fun.
I have just developed a 48 pin device programmer, and used an arm with usb and a fpga, so i can reuse the code from the arm which has a full FAT32/16 DFS >4gig SDHC using a 30MHz bus.
It also programs the fpga using slave parellel mode which is the fastest way to do it.
One side affect from this is that after programming we have a nice 8 bit bus between the fpga and the arm, so the file system should be quick.

Designing the PCB is no problem, I am more than qualified and capable, its the HDL, i am lerning verilog at the moment for my job, but only started september, so need some help.
Its wouldn't be massive work to port minimig to the board, only a simple lcd interface and a few other bits, but then updating it to a 68020 and adding other nice bits might be some work...

As i said there are other options like using an OMAP3 600MHz arm chip and emulating the amiga but then its just another pandora.....and expensive....


I'm not sure if its even worth doing, just getting some feedback....
 

Offline picmanTopic starter

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Join Date: Dec 2009
  • Posts: 22
    • Show only replies by picman
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #6 on: December 29, 2009, 01:37:54 AM »
Quote from: mitchd61;535303
I find something like that extremely interesting and I know a few others that probably would as well. I'm an old school gamer and Amiga user and think your concept is well worth developing. I didn't see any mention of WiFi. Have you considered that? Also I agree with the previous idea of going for a Pandora type look, but perhaps a little sleaker in form. I seem to recall seeing some concept art years ago of a hand-held type of Amiga. If you could find those they might inspire you.



Wifi hmmm, Maybe, would have to look into the cost.
I would prefer someone else to design the case, i see this project as a comunity project, so someone takes a seperate task, like designing the case etc.
Different people bring different skills and it gets the job done cheaper, and better IMHO... Cost is everything. for instance if the Iphone lcd was cheaper and  better we could use that insted, mass produced parts is what we are looking for to keep the price at the minimum, i just like the size of the PSP lcd, and have a few with touchscreens attatched.
It would also be fully open source.
The pandora started the same way and has done very well.
 

Offline jkonstan

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Dec 2005
  • Posts: 243
    • Show only replies by jkonstan
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #7 on: December 29, 2009, 02:18:14 AM »
I would use the PSP TFT display (480x272 with 24bit RGB) since these are cheap @ $30 USD and readily available.
There is presently only a HDL 68000 CPU core and not a HDL 68020 CPU core.
If you use DDR_SDRAM instead of plain SDRAM, you will get a larger bandwidth and slew rate control in the DDR output drivers. Also, unless you decide to make Amiga specific interfaces, the Amiga schematics may not be of much use to you. You should probably stay with industry standard VGA monitor port, PS2 keyboard/mouse ports, SD card interface, DB-9 Serial port  etc....
 

Offline rkauer

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: May 2006
  • Posts: 3263
    • Show only replies by rkauer
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #8 on: December 29, 2009, 02:25:17 AM »
As for the 020/030 emulation: ask for some help from Tony_Wilen. He is the author of WinUAE and can help with the C code, which then you need to adapt to Verilog (the same as Dennis did for the first Minimig).
Goodbye people.

I\'ll pop on from time to time, RL is acting up.
 

Offline dreamcast270mhz

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Join Date: May 2009
  • Posts: 322
    • Show only replies by dreamcast270mhz
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #9 on: December 29, 2009, 02:36:33 AM »
Well, I can't really help with code/ case design type stuff, but I'll buy a pre-release and test various software if needed, and maybe I could donate a bit every few months... but not right now, xmas is just over and I need to get a job to help pay for a trip to guatemala, so if I get that covered you can count on a ~ $30 donation every 2-3 months... I've been interested in coding so I may pick up a few languages here and there.
My machines:
PowerMac G4 MDD 1.5ghz 1.25GB 10.5.8 & MOS 2.7
Mac Mini C2D 10.6.8 2GHz 3GB 250GB HDD
MacBook Retina 16GB 256GB SSD 10.8
iPad 2
Underground Gamer invites (a classic game site) PM

Need a part for a PC or Mac? PM me, I\'ll let you know if I come across it.

OS X trumps Windows on every level.

MorphOS, OS4 and Classic Amiga systems are the only ones who are real \'Amigas\', not that joke AROS or Amiga Forever.
 

Offline mitchd61

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Join Date: Nov 2009
  • Posts: 23
    • Show only replies by mitchd61
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #10 on: December 29, 2009, 03:01:09 AM »
Quote from: picman;535306
Wifi hmmm, Maybe, would have to look into the cost.
I would prefer someone else to design the case, i see this project as a comunity project, so someone takes a seperate task, like designing the case etc.
Different people bring different skills and it gets the job done cheaper, and better IMHO... Cost is everything. for instance if the Iphone lcd was cheaper and better we could use that insted, mass produced parts is what we are looking for to keep the price at the minimum, i just like the size of the PSP lcd, and have a few with touchscreens attatched.
It would also be fully open source.
The pandora started the same way and has done very well.

Well, I'd definitely would be interested in working on some case design ideas once I had a fairly clear picture of the internal layout. The actual tooling of it is beyond me though. I simply don't have access to the needed tools and materials. As far as the screen goes, I like the PSP lcd as well. The screen on my PSPgo seems to be a bit sharper than my PSP-3000. However, I would imagine the PSPgo's is more expensive simply by virtue of being "newer" technology.
Amiga 500/GVP A530 Turbo
Amiga 600
 

Offline picmanTopic starter

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Join Date: Dec 2009
  • Posts: 22
    • Show only replies by picman
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #11 on: December 29, 2009, 03:09:59 AM »
Quote from: jkonstan;535309
I would use the PSP TFT display (480x272 with 24bit RGB) since these are cheap @ $30 USD and readily available.
There is presently only a HDL 68000 CPU core and not a HDL 68020 CPU core.
If you use DDR_SDRAM instead of plain SDRAM, you will get a larger bandwidth and slew rate control in the DDR output drivers. Also, unless you decide to make Amiga specific interfaces, the Amiga schematics may not be of much use to you. You should probably stay with industry standard VGA monitor port, PS2 keyboard/mouse ports, SD card interface, DB-9 Serial port  etc....


Yes i agree with the psp lcd, its a nice size and cheap...
With the ram, i would need more info, let me explain, we could put a lump of DDR2 on the board no problem, but would it matter?
Lets say the fpga is running at 100mhz the slow SDRAM is faster than that so would 333MHz DDR make much difference? even if we had a 68020 running at 50mhz........
 Need input....
As for the ports i was considering a hdmi port for the VGA as you can buy or make a hdmi to vga cable, the reason is the size of the connector. You could also get comp video and svideo out of the same connector, maybe???
I was also thinking of using the mini sd card (as used in phones etc) again because of the size.
And another port(type unkown) which puts out the rs232, jtag for the arm and fpga, that would be expanded on a small breakout board, used only for developing.
The arm chip i have in mind is the LPC2388, this little bute has 96k sram, 512k flash, USB host, device, OTG, ethernet(maybe we can find a wifi chip for it) is low power and only requires a 3.3v supply, and its cheap....
 

Offline picmanTopic starter

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Join Date: Dec 2009
  • Posts: 22
    • Show only replies by picman
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #12 on: December 29, 2009, 03:16:16 AM »
Quote from: mitchd61;535315
Well, I'd definitely would be interested in working on some case design ideas once I had a fairly clear picture of the internal layout. The actual tooling of it is beyond me though. I simply don't have access to the needed tools and materials. As far as the screen goes, I like the PSP lcd as well. The screen on my PSPgo seems to be a bit sharper than my PSP-3000. However, I would imagine the PSPgo's is more expensive simply by virtue of being "newer" technology.


Not sure of the difference between the 2 lcds, but we can find out...
I have a PSP lcd connected to an avr32 and its a very nice bright screen.
See, interest already... All we need is people willing to help and you can move mountains.. :laughing:

Its all about getting enough people to help.

I know i keep on about it, but pandora did it and that cost over £1M..
 

Offline picmanTopic starter

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Join Date: Dec 2009
  • Posts: 22
    • Show only replies by picman
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #13 on: December 29, 2009, 03:28:53 AM »
Quote from: rkauer;535310
As for the 020/030 emulation: ask for some help from Tony_Wilen. He is the author of WinUAE and can help with the C code, which then you need to adapt to Verilog (the same as Dennis did for the first Minimig).


wonder if this would be a starting point?? http://www.c-to-verilog.com/
 

Offline Drummerboy

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Jul 2003
  • Posts: 512
    • Show only replies by Drummerboy
Re: Portable Amiga anyone??
« Reply #14 on: December 29, 2009, 06:04:41 AM »
Quote from: picman;535297
Hi , I new here (first post) so hi to everyone.

I am considering developing a small compact and cheap portable amiga.
I Design PCBs for a living.
Imagine minimig crossed with a PSP.

Specs
------
32MB SDRAM
1.6M gate Spartan 3E FPGA
4.3" Touchscreen LCD
Joystick
Joypad
buttons (start, menu, reset)
ARM 7 MPU with support for FAT 16/32 using a fast 8 bit bus between the fpga and arm, USB mass storage for SDCARD.
Dataflash for storing the roms.
PSP/iphone Battery
TV out
Headphone/speakers
Volume control
Li-po Charger
The 68000 CPU will be integrated into the fpga.

It will also be able to run other IP cores as well, like pacman,defender, vic20, atari st etc...

I am quite happy to design the hardware and draw the PCB, but need some help with porting the HDL over, can you help..

Is anyone interested in such a device or is it just another waste of time???



Great!..  

Go ahead!..  

I am possible constumer!. and defenitly the price might be the right.

i  think too more power than 68000, a  Wifi are needed, and other things like USB Conector.. you know the Portable Amiga will have contemporary or seeing to the future hardware.

Anyway, are cool idea and project, i hope you can materialize this project.  

I be happy for giving any opinion about from my humble position!

Best  Regards!
Amiga 1000, 500, 600, 2000, 1200, 4000...

C= VIC 20 / 64 /SX64/ 128

Atari 600XL (SIC Cartdridge)
Atari 800XL (SIO2SD unit)

Jay Miner`s Atari 2600 - Wood front -

\\"Amiga, this Computer have a Own Live\\"--\\"Silence When the Drums are Talking\\".... DrummerBoy