Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: picman on December 28, 2009, 11:14:51 PM
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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
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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???
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Hi , I new here (first post) so hi to everyone.
Hi! :-)
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?
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)...
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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.
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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.
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Hi. I'd be interested, if the price is right
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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....
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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.
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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....
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As for the 020/030 emulation: ask for some help from Tony_Wilen (http://eab.abime.net/member.php?u=257). 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).
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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.
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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.
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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....
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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..
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As for the 020/030 emulation: ask for some help from Tony_Wilen (http://eab.abime.net/member.php?u=257). 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/
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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!
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The original Amiga had Chip RAM & Fast RAM where CPU could access Fast RAM alone and CPU & custom chipset could access the Chip RAM. The current MiniMIG core consumes a fair amount of memory bandwidth using a single external memory bus architecture (SRAM x16); however, DDR should work fine for this design. SDRAM has been used as well on DE1/DE2; however, you should consider running SDRAM at 133Mhz with CAS2 access. You do not want to build such a nice platform and run out of memory bandwidth when MiniMIG core is enhanced (AGA graphics, USB, Ethernet, 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....
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Welcome to the forums here Picman. As others have written, it is great to have enthusiastic new members here.
I love the idea you have put forward and sincerely believe that it can be done. Your estimate for total cost may be a little low at the end of the day, but as we have seen with the original MiniMig's success (it has been produced and sold commercially in small quantities), if done right and a quality product can result from the idea and work, it will sell.
Making it portable with it's own display and battery power will be a big step forward from the MiniMig's design, which I always said was just the beginning of better things to come in the future. There is a member here that did a case design for the MiniMig that turned out well (even if it was a bit pricey) and I am sure he would be interested in working on a case design for your portable device. Using mass produced parts is the smartest thing to do, so if the entire design could be made to fit into an already existing case and display device, such as the PSP, or some other small hand-held gaming, music, or large cell phone, a new case would not have to be designed. That of course would only work if replacement cases and displays could be obtained at a reasonable cost. But it would make sense to me that replacement cases and display LCDs would most likely be much cheaper to obtain than a new case design for an existing LCD display.
Also, do we really need touchscreen capability? On such a small screen it might not be practical to implement and/or use. Personally I would like to see the form factor a bit larger than the PSP or iPhone/iPodTouch, but that is just my preference and I am not the typical small form factor game player, so don't listen to me.
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In my opinion it's better to go for a sort of laptop, since the lack of keyboard on these handheld machines make them pretty useless for general computing.
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In my opinion it's better to go for a sort of laptop, since the lack of keyboard on these handheld machines make them pretty useless for general computing.
Thats the idea of the touchscreen.
The unit is only ment to play games and not write applications etc, so only a minimal keyboard is needed like the iphone...
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Thats the idea of the touchscreen.
The unit is only ment to play games and not write applications etc, so only a minimal keyboard is needed like the iphone...
But Pandora is already available for order...so why bother starting now?
PZ.
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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.
Did you already try to contact MikeJ from FPGAArcade (http://www.fpgaarcade.com)? He claims to have a HDL '030 core. I think cooperating with him could save some work.
greets,
Staf.
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Did you already try to contact MikeJ from FPGAArcade (http://www.fpgaarcade.com)? He claims to have a HDL '030 core. I think cooperating with him could save some work.
greets,
Staf.
I have mailed him, but no response yet...
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But Pandora is already available for order...so why bother starting now?
PZ.
Why bother indeed, this is what i am asking? Is it worth the hastle.
Pandora is expensive, and not the same beast.
Its a 600mhz arm with hardware 3d gfx etc, bit over kill to emulate an amiga..
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bit over kill to emulate an amiga..
Right, but it can do a whole lot more than emulate an Amiga, which opens it to a much wider market.
If you aren't looking to get rich and have some free time, sure, a dedicated portable Amiga emulator could be fun for a few people. I'd stop short of investing a bunch of money in the idea, though.
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Using mass produced parts is the smartest thing to do, so if the entire design could be made to fit into an already existing case and display device, such as the PSP, or some other small hand-held gaming, music, or large cell phone, a new case would not have to be designed. That of course would only work if replacement cases and displays could be obtained at a reasonable cost. But it would make sense to me that replacement cases and display LCDs would most likely be much cheaper to obtain than a new case design for an existing .
As much as I would love to work on a case design, I have to agree with using mass produced parts to keep costs minimal. I'm pretty fired up about the whole concept though and a distinctively Amiga replacement case is something I'd still like to explore. Even if only for my own personal use.
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As much as I would love to work on a case design, I have to agree with using mass produced parts to keep costs minimal. I'm pretty fired up about the whole concept though and a distinctively Amiga replacement case is something I'd still like to explore. Even if only for my own personal use.
So how about using the PSP case?
It has a large capacity battery, the correct size screen, analog joystick, dpad..
Slight mod for an sd card... there are lots of faulty ones on ebay for cheap...
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Bring back the Walker... :roflmao:
You should base it around a 68030 that was totally compatible with 68000, plus you can play more cpu intensive games e.g. 3D FPS.
What are your qualifications? I did 2 years of Electronic technician certificate, but there was no design subjects. If I did the diploma course you got to build a Z80 computer.
Considering all the cheap and nasty downloadable games you can get... If you can build the hardware someone will get around updated all the classic games.
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Right, but it can do a whole lot more than emulate an Amiga, which opens it to a much wider market.
If you aren't looking to get rich and have some free time, sure, a dedicated portable Amiga emulator could be fun for a few people. I'd stop short of investing a bunch of money in the idea, though.
Don't get me wrong, i agree with you, its not about making money though, its about keeping the amiga alive in other forms so we can continue to enjoy it.
I won't be investing loads of money into it, maybe a little time an effort but it could be worth it.
If it did make it off the ground people interested would have to pre order to raise the money to make the units. I think its the fairest way of doing things so no one person has to foot the bill. Also it gives you a good idea on how many units you need to produce, and over production is unliky.
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Bring back the Walker... :roflmao:
You should base it around a 68030 that was totally compatible with 68000, plus you can play more cpu intensive games e.g. 3D FPS.
What are your qualifications? I did 2 years of Electronic technician certificate, but there was no design subjects. If I did the diploma course you got to build a Z80 computer.
Considering all the cheap and nasty downloadable games you can get... If you can build the hardware someone will get around updated all the classic games.
I have a Bachelors degree in Electronic Engineering, and have done IPC Advanced Designer Certification last year.
I am used to laying out complex boards of many layers but it could be a challenge to use only 4 (to keep the pcb cheap) It needs to be 4 because of using the bga fpga, 6-8 would be better. But because we wont be using all the pins on the fpga we might get away with 4....
I use Altium Winter 09 for capture and layout.
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I have mailed him, but no response yet...
Hi Picman,
I got your email, but I haven't had a chance to reply yet.
If you look on http://www.fpgaarcade.com and scroll down a bit you will see the hi-res touch LCD daughter board for the Replay board, which is a prototype for a portable machine.
Work is progressing on a 68030 core well, this will be released with a new Amiga core for the Replay board as soon as possible.
I design ASICs / boards for a living and have to say doing it on 4 layers is almost impossible to do while keeping good power and ground planes needed for good signal integrity, really important for the high speed video and memory busses. You could do it if you go to 4 thou traces but then the PCB cost goes higher than a cheap 6 layer board. I use Mentor PCB tools for the design.
Designing the PCB is by far the easiest bit of the work. There is a lot of software design in in the embedded controller and design work in the video and memory subsystems. It looks like not much has happened since I got the first board back in the summer, but it's been a long slog to get the rest of the system written.
The other big headache is to get these boards produced at a good price you have to buy in bulk and from the suppliers directly. I am lucky enough to go to China a lot, so I have been talking and buying a lot of components in Shenzhen. I have quite a collection of bits now :)
So, I think it is great if you want to work on this, but don't underestimate the amount of work it takes to get it up and running.
I'll mail you privately as well.
Best,
Mike
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Port UAE to either the Pandora (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_%28console%29) and/or to the GP2X Wiz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X_Wiz), and make some nice whdload menu system (something like AmigaForever or Gamebase Amiga) and you've got your kickass portable Amiga :D
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As for the 020/030 emulation: ask for some help from Tony_Wilen (http://eab.abime.net/member.php?u=257). 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).
Eh, no - the Minimig sports a _real_ 68000 CPU, not a softcore one. And my understanding is that coding an FPGA and C coding are so far apart that using UAE code is not really an option, allthought one can look at UAE code for inspiration and answers for specific issues.
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Regarding wifi - to be used how, exactly?
For AmigaOS there's only a third party prism2 driver around, and it only supports WEP and 802.11b - hardly relevant today. Before wasting time on wifi for a portable minimig, one should at least make sure there's proper wifi for AmigaOS at all first.
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So how about using the PSP case?
It has a large capacity battery, the correct size screen, analog joystick, dpad..
Slight mod for an sd card... there are lots of faulty ones on ebay for cheap...
It seems to me that would be the most straight forward approach. The only consideration would the variations in the PSP models. The PSP-1000 has a slightly bigger (thicker) design and would probably be a better choice by virtue of having more room to work with. I've had my PSP-1000 and 3000 both apart for case mods and the 1000 definitely has more room and the construction is sturdier as well.
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Is anyone interested in such a device
I'll just run UAE on my PowerBook (http://sintonen.fi/video/misc/PowerBook-G4-MorphOS-3-sneak-preview.mp4) ;)
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Thats the idea of the touchscreen.
The unit is only ment to play games and not write applications etc, so only a minimal keyboard is needed like the iphone...
I was quite interested up until you said that. Why is it so hard to include a tiny little qwerty keyboard and make the screen flipup like a tiny little laptop... Thats the soul reason i dont even look at the iphone, or why im not considering the google phone...
@Piru
Get it done already! im tiered of waiting, even installed linux on it! ^^ Looks good btw, boots faster then pretty much anything i´ve seen.
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I was quite interested up until you said that. Why is it so hard to include a tiny little qwerty keyboard and make the screen flipup like a tiny little laptop...
Are you thinking of something like this... http://ps3maven.com/psp-laptop-mod-keyboard/ It's a little rough, but uses readily available parts. A little refinement and voila!
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touchscreen or no many amiga games use or can use the keyboard a lot. maybe buttons emulating keyboard presses could be used and a setup prog in the os to setup which keys, turbo, etc.
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Port UAE to either the Pandora (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_%28console%29) and/or to the GP2X Wiz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X_Wiz), and make some nice whdload menu system (something like AmigaForever or Gamebase Amiga) and you've got your kickass portable Amiga :D
What like this http://pandorawiki.org/UAE4ALL :)
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Are you thinking of something like this... http://ps3maven.com/psp-laptop-mod-keyboard/ It's a little rough, but uses readily available parts. A little refinement and voila!
Something like that yes. Maybe a bit more Nokia N97 (is it?) style. Now the only thing keeping me from buying that is the non opensourcenesss.
Read an interesting comment made by intel regarding the Atom 2... "Promising" not to make it too powerful so it would compete with existing higher end laptop solutions... So no dual core for atom netbooks it seems, unless someone is smart enough to take the desktop version and make a netbook...
Im quite sure companies know what users want.. But hey, milk the cow!...
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Something like that yes. Maybe a bit more Nokia N97 (is it?) style. Now the only thing keeping me from buying that is the non opensourcenesss.
N900 is nice. Touchscreen. Physical keyboard. And it's open source (much of it at least), etc.
So no dual core for atom netbooks it seems, unless someone is smart enough to take the desktop version and make a netbook...
Actually intel forbids anyone from using the desktop CPUs in laptops / netboots. Fun, not.
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So no dual core for atom netbooks it seems, unless someone is smart enough to take the desktop version and make a netbook...
The Atoms do hyperthreading, though, looks like two processors in your task manager, and only draws the power of one core!
Actually intel forbids anyone from using the desktop CPUs in laptops / netboots. Fun, not.
They probably learned their lesson back when there were still desktop CPUs in laptops (high clock-rate powerhungry P4s in particular.) Too much heat in a small space causing shutdowns and crashes doesn't make Intel or the laptop vendor look very good.
P.S., all Nokia products are crap. Sorry Finland.
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The N97 uses the OMAP3 .. back to pandora......
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I used to use Nokia phones all the time because they were super sturdy. Went Samsung for a few phones, they seemed to last about a year (I'm hard on my phones) then went back to Nokia for the Xpress Music 5310. Tons of features-also tons of flaws in the software, and the durability has been a disappointment-I'm on my fourth one of them in a year and a half. The earphone speaker keeps blowing out.
So if this is indicative of current Nokia product durability, then I would be reluctant to throw down for another one.
With regards to the actual subject of this thread-yes please! A portable Amiga would rock. It would also be possible to sell them in Fred Meyer with a pre-loaded selection of Amiga games. You know, it would actually MAKE SOME MONEY for someone. Needless to say, The Name, Inc. were not hyped on the idea..
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Having followed the Pandora project for the last 24 (?) months or so, I have seen how difficult it has been for a team of 4 dedicated people to develop a hand held device, similar to what you are proposing. And the Pandora still hasn't been delivered to the first paying customer yet.
Are you proposing something similar to the http://www.fpgaarcade.com/ but in portable form? If so then that is something I may be interested in, at the right price (i.e. cheaper than the a current complete minimig).
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Having followed the Pandora project for the last 24 (?) months or so, I have seen how difficult it has been for a team of 4 dedicated people to develop a hand held device, similar to what you are proposing. And the Pandora still hasn't been delivered to the first paying customer yet.
Are you proposing something similar to the http://www.fpgaarcade.com/ but in portable form? If so then that is something I may be interested in, at the right price (i.e. cheaper than the a current complete minimig).
Yes thats prity much it, but it will be more basic ie not so many ports etc, but a bigger fpga (1.6M gates insted of 1.2M) and more ram(32/64MB Remember not just for the amiga), so it will be a simple design that can be prototyped and delivered much more quickly.
Psp has mini-usb, headphones, 2 d-pads, analog joystick, and we can add tv out.
but it also uses a 4.3" lcd, is a nice hand size, has a good battery, wireless (if we can find out any info on it) a home button, volume buttons, select button, start button, plus a few more buttons, and they are very cheap from ebay faulty. Not the newer ones the old 1003's. The udm is useless (i think).
I have had a look inside a psp, and think we can replace the motherboard. So if we go ahead, it just means buying a scrap psp form ebay for aound £20 and
our new board, the psp uses the sony memory stick, so we might be able to use that too (insted of the sd).
Its by no means perfect, but its cheap, and it will work, and be up and running very quickly.
What do you think?
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I used to use Nokia phones all the time because they were super sturdy. Went Samsung for a few phones, they seemed to last about a year (I'm hard on my phones) then went back to Nokia for the Xpress Music 5310. Tons of features-also tons of flaws in the software, and the durability has been a disappointment-I'm on my fourth one of them in a year and a half. The earphone speaker keeps blowing out.
So if this is indicative of current Nokia product durability, then I would be reluctant to throw down for another one.
With regards to the actual subject of this thread-yes please! A portable Amiga would rock. It would also be possible to sell them in Fred Meyer with a pre-loaded selection of Amiga games. You know, it would actually MAKE SOME MONEY for someone. Needless to say, The Name, Inc. were not hyped on the idea..
Making money is not the issue, this wont make anyone rich and i dont wish to profit from it, it will be totally open source, The boards will be put out at cost ( or as close as possible) .
The pandora took 2 years to develop because they did the full blown design from scratch, board case software etc, i have developed stuff for work from the ground up and it does take time,
What i am proposing is we miss out a lot of the steps, develop a small pcb with a big fpga, and lots of ram, to fit into a case that is well made and can donate lots of parts.
The software has been written (just needs modding) the firmware for the arm has lots done already, so i don't think its such a masive task to get a working unit.
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Psp has mini-usb, headphones, 2 d-pads, analog joystick, and we can add tv out.
but it also uses a 4.3" lcd, is a nice hand size, has a good battery, wireless (if we can find out any info on it) a home button, volume buttons, select button, start button, plus a few more buttons, and they are very cheap from ebay faulty. Not the newer ones the old 1003's. The udm is useless (i think).
I have had a look inside a psp, and think we can replace the motherboard. So if we go ahead, it just means buying a scrap psp form ebay for aound £20 and
our new board, the psp uses the sony memory stick, so we might be able to use that too (insted of the sd).
Its by no means perfect, but its cheap, and it will work, and be up and running very quickly.
I'm pretty sure you are right about the UMD drive being useless in this instance. It's Sony's proprietary format and I'm not aware of anyway it would be useful in ths instance. They take up a significant amount of space and besides, if the UMD drives actually work they could be resold on eBay.
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I'm pretty sure you are right about the UMD drive being useless in this instance. It's Sony's proprietary format and I'm not aware of anyway it would be useful in ths instance. They take up a significant amount of space and besides, if the UMD drives actually work they could be resold on eBay.
Lol i just thought, the space the udm drive takes up, you could fit a ipod hard disk in there........ 40 gig amiga portable anyone..... :roflmao:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Hitachi-1-8-iPod-Video-60GB-HDD-Hard-Disk-ZIF-Connect_W0QQitemZ110474122518QQcmdZViewItemQQptZOther_MP3_Player_Accessories?hash=item19b8c55516#ht_500wt_990
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Lol i just thought, the space the udm drive takes up, you could fit a ipod hard disk in there........ 40 gig amiga portable anyone..... :roflmao:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Hitachi-1-8-iPod-Video-60GB-HDD-Hard-Disk-ZIF-Connect_W0QQitemZ110474122518QQcmdZViewItemQQptZOther_MP3_Player_Accessories?hash=item19b8c55516#ht_500wt_990
From what I've seen, it would probably fit. I've seen several PSPs where the UMD was removed, and a few modders who have claimed to fit a similar HD in it's place.
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Why would you want a HD in there? A SDHC card is future proof and by the time you release will probably be bigger than any HD you could propose today. I think Minimig already utilises that.
Look at those NDS mod cards, which are expandable via MicroSD card. They are so awesome. I wish there was an Amiga in there instead though. If only you could fit an FPGA on the expansion slot, or something that would accellerate emulation significantly enough for an NDS to emulate an A500 adequately. Of course the screen has a lower resolution, but perhaps you could compress or crop the image to size.
Hey, I would consider destroying my NDS to put Amiga emulation internals in there.
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Why would you want a HD in there? A SDHC card is future proof and by the time you release will probably be bigger than any HD you could propose today. I think Minimig already utilises that.
Look at those NDS mod cards, which are expandable via MicroSD card. They are so awesome. I wish there was an Amiga in there instead though. If only you could fit an FPGA on the expansion slot, or something that would accellerate emulation significantly enough for an NDS to emulate an A500 adequately. Of course the screen has a lower resolution, but perhaps you could compress or crop the image to size.
Hey, I would consider destroying my NDS to put Amiga emulation internals in there.
Well for one at the moment the largest sd card is what 64GB?? The largest 1.8" hd is 250gb? as the sd card gets bigger so do the hard disks....
More importantly the data thru put is much better on a harddisk, udma mode 100MB/s vs 45MB/s on a x300 sdhc card.
It wasn't ment to be serious anyway..... :roflmao:
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Well for one at the moment the largest sd card is what 64GB?? The largest 1.8" hd is 250gb? as the sd card gets bigger so do the hard disks....
More importantly the data thru put is much better on a harddisk, udma mode 100MB/s vs 45MB/s on a x300 sdhc card.
It wasn't ment to be serious anyway..... :roflmao:
I figured that much, but it does go to show how much room there is inside one of those cases. Comparatively speaking anyway. Any chance of fitting a Dreamcast in there too!?:lol:
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Fantastic!!!!
I hope it will become reality....
Carlo
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What do you think?
Ok, this sounds more interesting. So all you would make is the board? And of course a very detailed set of instructions for people to customise their duff PSPs?
What sort of price are we looking at?
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What like this http://pandorawiki.org/UAE4ALL :)
Gargle.. droool... desire...need have...
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Ok, this sounds more interesting. So all you would make is the board? And of course a very detailed set of instructions for people to customise their duff PSPs?
What sort of price are we looking at?
Well some of the main parts needed are:
from digikey Digikey:
FPGA Spartan 3e 1600 320BGA 122-1481-ND £40.90 in 1's
64MB DDR Sdram 557-1212-1-ND £5.60
ARM7 LPC 2388 568-4323-ND £10.32
The PCB i think we can get for £10 (6 layer) ish if we buy 100 or more..
The FPGA would have to be mounted which would cost around £100 for 100 boards.
Then we have the psu parts and connectors so at a real guess i would say £120 ish for build 1, now this will come down quite a bit if we buy more than i part at a time, eg the arm7 is £7 in 25's...
So i would expect it to be around £100....
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I have had a look inside a psp, and think we can replace the motherboard. So if we go ahead, it just means buying a scrap psp form ebay for aound £20 and our new board, the psp uses the sony memory stick, so we might be able to use that too (insted of the sd).
Its by no means perfect, but its cheap, and it will work, and be up and running very quickly.
What do you think?
I think you're way too optimistic. Have you ever produced such electric devices?
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I think you're way too optimistic. Have you ever produced such electric devices?
Optimistic How?
And yes I design boards every day...
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Selling 100 units of a £100-£120 product that requires some technical skills and further equipment (PSPs aren't quite lining the streets as far as I know) to turn into a working device does sound a bit on the optimistic side to me. For that kind of money, I'd want a fully working, guaranteed device with no effort on my part. GP2X is only slightly more expensive, apparently, if they're still available. Isn't the Pandora supposed to be in the £200 range, and far more capable?
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@tone007
I think he would need to contact the Natami team if he wants to produce a more capable system than the MiniMig. The Minimig is only A500 compatible with only a few add-ons such as the processor core in the FPGA.
@PicMan
I like the idea of a portable device but you've left out the price of the screen in your price estimates.
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@tone007
I think he would need to contact the Natami team if he wants to produce a more capable system than the MiniMig. The Minimig is only A500 compatible with only a few add-ons such as the processor core in the FPGA.
@PicMan
I like the idea of a portable device but you've left out the price of the screen in your price estimates.
The screen should come with the dona PSP, if not they are around £20.
There are loads of faulty psp on ebay with power faults, udm not reading faults or other faults but have an intact screen. Recycling is good.
I have bought 2 today for less than £44 all in.
This is a project, it won't be for everyone, you will need some skill to assemble it, if you can change a screen in a psp, the you will be able to fit a new board, but it will be fun, and thats what life is about.
Its also not all about the minimig, thats only part of it, because its a large fpga, a lot of other computers/video games machines can be implemented.
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Selling 100 units of a £100-£120 product that requires some technical skills and further equipment (PSPs aren't quite lining the streets as far as I know) to turn into a working device does sound a bit on the optimistic side to me. For that kind of money, I'd want a fully working, guaranteed device with no effort on my part. GP2X is only slightly more expensive, apparently, if they're still available. Isn't the Pandora supposed to be in the £200 range, and far more capable?
So its not for you, fine. Buy a gp2x, and run the amiga emulator very slowly, i have one here and its not good.
Pandora will be out in april or may (maybe) but all the ones produced are back orders unless you can get one of the canceled ones) The price still has not been fixed, and its still twice the price.
This is not ment to be a commercial product, just a bit of fun to keep the amiga (among others) alive in a different form,
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This is a project, it won't be for everyone, you will need some skill to assemble it, if you can change a screen in a psp, the you will be able to fit a new board, but it will be fun, and thats what life is about.
Its also not all about the minimig, thats only part of it, because its a large fpga, a lot of other computers/video games machines can be implemented.
I for one don't mind a "some assembly required" type of project. That's part of the fun of this sort of thing. When you mention other computers/video games being implemented, what are some you have had in mind? It's an obscure machine, but a portable Atari Jaguar would be pretty unique and Sega CD as well.
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Pandora will be out in april or may (maybe)
I like my vaporware in one piece!
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What's wrong with this? (apart from the lack of case and core ;)
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/common/replay_july_lcd_large.jpg
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What's wrong with this? (apart from the lack of case and core ;)
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/common/replay_july_lcd_large.jpg
Actually, it is a very nice system. What I don't like is the additional processor for boot & disk.
Prefer the version on the Altera de2 boards, where a processor build into the FPGA does the additional load. I think it is a much cleaner design.
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I think this is a great project.
I have a GP2X running the latest version UAE4all and its actually very good, many games are almost 100% with the right settings @ 240-280Mhz, some fussy games are less smooth. Amiga/16bit generation in a handheld is extra fun over emulation on a PC.
Replacing the gubbins in a dead PSP seems like a good idea, you wont have to think about moulding/design and can hijack Sony's industrial design whilst recycling.
I'll probably get a 2nd batch pandora, but more options for portable Amiga fun is good, I hope this project makes to to completion.
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Actually, it is a very nice system. What I don't like is the additional processor for boot & disk.
Prefer the version on the Altera de2 boards, where a processor build into the FPGA does the additional load. I think it is a much cleaner design.
I agree, but there are some downsides. You need to configure the FPGA from something initially. You can do this from a serial flash device and then use a processor core in the FPGA to bootstrap the system. The problem with this is that the firmware the core is using is also burned into the flash so it is not easy to bug fix it - not practical in a mass produced design.
The advantage of using the external ARM is it costs about the same as an external flash and it is much easier to re-load the firmware from the SD card should an update be needed. You can also recover easily (on the Replay board at least) from a bricked system using the USB port to re-flash the ARM.
Picman, one thing about your pricing. Don't forget the passive components - on the Replay board the power supplies, resistors, caps and connectors account for more than half the component cost...
/MikeJ
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I agree, but there are some downsides. You need to configure the FPGA from something initially. You can do this from a serial flash device and then use a processor core in the FPGA to bootstrap the system. The problem with this is that the firmware the core is using is also burned into the flash so it is not easy to bug fix it - not practical in a mass produced design.
/MikeJ
Did you know about the multi-boot from spi on the spartans ?
First boot would be a "maintenance-mc68k" which checks the system, verifies the spi contents vs. the sd-flash boot file, and boots the second stage.
No need at all for an ARM ;-)
And, I know of people who use it in real production quantities.
But, I really agree, it is a matter of taste ;-)
Cheers
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Mumule,
yes you are right, the SPI boot would be an option - but I want(ed) the option of moving to a spartan6/altera device in the future so didn't want to tie myself in to much.
There is a quite a bit of software in the ARM to boot up and run the OSD etc, and for things like hard disk support you want that running at the same time as the host processor.
I like the fact I can run this independently of whatever processor is running in the FPGA.
Cheers,
Mike
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Mumule,
yes you are right, the SPI boot would be an option - but I want(ed) the option of moving to a spartan6/altera device in the future so didn't want to tie myself in to much.
Spartan6 supports it too.
But why would anybody move to altera !?!?
;-)
Just put in the spartan6 already on your board, saves you a lot of trouble changing it later anyway.
There is a quite a bit of software in the ARM to boot up and run the OSD etc, and for things like hard disk support you want that running at the same time as the host processor.
I like the fact I can run this independently of whatever processor is running in the FPGA.
As I said, it is a matter of taste ;-)
Cheers
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"Just put in the spartan6 already on your board, saves you a lot of trouble changing it later anyway."
ha, tempting. I already changed from spartan3 to 3e, and if I start the change to spartan6 they will have brought out spartan7 before I finish the damn thing :)
/Mike
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I have a GP2X running the latest version UAE4all and its actually very good, many games are almost 100% with the right settings @ 240-280Mhz, some fussy games are less smooth. Amiga/16bit generation in a handheld is extra fun over emulation on a PC.
How happy are you with the GP2X overall? I've been contemplating buying one. Mostly for the Amiga emulation, but a few other systems interest me as well. UAE on the PSP just doesn't seem to be smooth enough on a lot of the games, despite some tweeking of the settings.
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Well some of the main parts needed are:
from digikey Digikey:
FPGA Spartan 3e 1600 320BGA 122-1481-ND £40.90 in 1's
64MB DDR Sdram 557-1212-1-ND £5.60
ARM7 LPC 2388 568-4323-ND £10.32
The PCB i think we can get for £10 (6 layer) ish if we buy 100 or more..
The FPGA would have to be mounted which would cost around £100 for 100 boards.
Then we have the psu parts and connectors so at a real guess i would say £120 ish for build 1, now this will come down quite a bit if we buy more than i part at a time, eg the arm7 is £7 in 25's...
So i would expect it to be around £100....
I would be interested in such a project. Sounds like a good next step in the evolution of the MiniMig type projects. Let me know when you are ready to order after the pcb design is finished and a prototype is tested and working.
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"Just put in the spartan6 already on your board, saves you a lot of trouble changing it later anyway."
ha, tempting. I already changed from spartan3 to 3e, and if I start the change to spartan6 they will have brought out spartan7 before I finish the damn thing :)
/Mike
I know ;-)
Just redone a board which had a xc3s1400a on it, and put a xc3sd1800a on.
After I got the boards, the spartan6 were there ;-)
But you're right, if you wait, you never will be done...
However, the memory controller on the spartan 6 is tempting ...
Cheers
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How happy are you with the GP2X overall? I've been contemplating buying one. Mostly for the Amiga emulation, but a few other systems interest me as well. UAE on the PSP just doesn't seem to be smooth enough on a lot of the games, despite some tweeking of the settings.
I'm very happy with it, emulation of 8-16-32bit systems is very high quality. MAME, CPS2, PCengine, GB/GBA, SNES, Megadrive and C64. Amiga emulation is one of the sticking points though, the GP2X cant quite get full 100% emulation, but unless you need perfection it does a good job on ~80% of the titles Ive tried. Some things dont work no matter how I tweak settings.
Pandora is already claiming 100% Amiga emulation and it has a keyboard and touchscreen (mouse emulation).
/partial hijack off.
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I'm very happy with it, emulation of 8-16-32bit systems is very high quality. MAME, CPS2, PCengine, GB/GBA, SNES, Megadrive and C64. Amiga emulation is one of the sticking points though, the GP2X cant quite get full 100% emulation, but unless you need perfection it does a good job on ~80% of the titles Ive tried. Some things dont work no matter how I tweak settings.
Pandora is already claiming 100% Amiga emulation and it has a keyboard and touchscreen (mouse emulation).
/partial hijack off.
Umm, I don't think Winuae claims "100% Amiga Emulation", do they more mean in regards to Speed, that it can run the emulation at full speed?
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Yeah, that's what I was getting at, thanks for clarifying. Maybe I shouldnt have used percentages?
My point is, Amiga emulation on the GP2X is good enough (imo) to give the feel of a "handheld Amiga" and play (most) games at playable speed.
If emulating an Amiga in hardware works better, like this project suggests, I'm all for it.
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The problem with the pandora and gp2x is IMHO, that you have (gp2x) dual core cpu running at nearly 300MHz to emulate a 7Mhz amiga, and it still can't do it right, the pandora will be able to but its running at what 600MHz?????
If it cant do it i would be worried.
But a small fpga running at the same freq as the original amiga will take no power at all really, and its not being software emulated.
We could even do away with the ARM, but i would rather keep it.
So to the original question... IS it worth producing this small board, and is anyone interested in helping to develop it. I can draw the board, but then it needs producing and prototyping, and that takes cash, so pre-orders would be nessesery.
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The problem with the pandora and gp2x is IMHO, that you have (gp2x) dual core cpu running at nearly 300MHz to emulate a 7Mhz amiga, and it still can't do it right, the pandora will be able to but its running at what 600MHz?????
If it cant do it i would be worried.
But a small fpga running at the same freq as the original amiga will take no power at all really, and its not being software emulated.
We could even do away with the ARM, but i would rather keep it.
So to the original question... IS it worth producing this small board, and is anyone interested in helping to develop it. I can draw the board, but then it needs producing and prototyping, and that takes cash, so pre-orders would be nessesery.
Well, since my Gp2X went belly up last week...count me in! :)
I enjoyed my Gp2X, but it was notorious for corrupting my SD card if a game locked up. Which is ok if I'm at home, but sucked on the road.
I could attempt to help out (electronics background from the military). Although it's been awhile. My last big project was building an interface for the mobile Armatron and the C-64....many moons ago. :)
Ed
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I'd be in. Best bet is to connect with a Chinese Manufacturer and get Amiga Kit to place orders. OR heck just open up an ebay store. Make a sales website, facebook and twitter page. Send a freebie to Leo Laporte with a Craopload of games, he'll mention it on his podcast, you'l get 100,000 hits on your site and sell 2000 units in a couple of weeks or less.
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Hi guys..
Firt of all my best wishes for any new product.
Then I wish to tip you about this:
(http://i.cmpnet.com/eetimes/pmFemto_Fig_BIG.jpg)
It's inside the vodafone UK femtocell which van be found on ebay for 50 punds.
I'm trying to find a way to get inside the box but I know almost nothing about fpga (compared to you)
I think there is at least one serial port somewhere but I can't find it.
If you have any clue you can come to my forum: http://forum.zibri.org
It's in italian but we all speak english there and I can setup an international section.
Sorry to be slightly off-topic but I think this board could also help YOU since it's a monster board with a CPLD and FPGA (the biggest spartan3 available).
It also features 3 gigabit ethernet ports and (maybe) an sdcard mmc slot. (top left of the image)