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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: runequester on January 07, 2010, 05:07:59 PM
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Still pondering getting a minimig since its size and convenience is appealing to me (and it'll turn out a lot cheaper than a 1200 with indivision)
Since this is almost entirely for gaming, is there any significant gains to be had from getting the 4 MB RAM compared to 2 ? A few games had more sound (Walker, Hired Guns) with extra ram, but just about everything would run off a 1 mb machine anyways.
What are peoples general experiences with the minimig? Good and bad
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No AGA games. It will not play them. It's convinent though, nice size, still need a keyboard to load games from. I had an Amiga joystick hooked up to it, felt like the real deal.. I just wish it had composite out, to hook to a TV.
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Still pondering getting a minimig since its size and convenience is appealing to me (and it'll turn out a lot cheaper than a 1200 with indivision)
Since this is almost entirely for gaming, is there any significant gains to be had from getting the 4 MB RAM compared to 2 ? A few games had more sound (Walker, Hired Guns) with extra ram, but just about everything would run off a 1 mb machine anyways.
What are peoples general experiences with the minimig? Good and bad
Well I liked mine so much I purchased a second 4MB model to use with the ARM addon board for HD emulation.
You don't really need the 4MB version for playing games from adf images, but if you plan to use harddisk emulation at some point in the future to play WHDLoad installed games from a virtual harddisk than 4MB is really required. As I has moving my minimig round to friends quite a bit I decided just to get a second one rather than send mine away to get the memory upgraded, That way I can keep the expanded on setup at home and keep the second one in a rucksack ready to take round to friends for a retro gaming session.
I find compatibility to be very good and it plays all my favourite games well just as smooth as the real thing, but it dose have some limitations, mainly when it comes to writing to adf images (the same limitations as WinUAE in general), mainly writing to some custom formatted adf disks dose not work at present.
If you want to play Lotus1 , 2 & 3, SimCity, Civilization, Eye of the Beholder, Lemmings or Jumpin' Jackson I can confirm it works perfectly after many hour of extensive testing :-)
Most other games I have tried also work without problems but sometimes you need to try more than one version of a cracked adf to find a good version (just like the old days).
In my opinion the minimig is the best thing to happen to Amiga gaming since the A1200 came along and put HD and more ram in reach of us less well off Amiga games that just did not have the money or space for a big box amiga.
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No AGA games. It will not play them. It's convinent though, nice size, still need a keyboard to load games from. I had an Amiga joystick hooked up to it, felt like the real deal.. I just wish it had composite out, to hook to a TV.
This one has composite and S-Video.
http://www.minimig.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=23
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This would mostly be for multiplayer and action sort of games, so no HD support is fine from the basic model. It looks like adding the ARM chip later on isn't too difficult either, if i change my mind.
Too bad about no AGA but thats alright. I can get my Banshee fix on the emulator until I can afford a proper A1200 again.
Minimig looks like a pretty convenient and affordable way to get an amiga again for now
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With the latest firmware, the standard Minimig (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=minimig) will provide HDF support without addon upgrades.
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With the latest firmware, the standard Minimig (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=minimig) will provide HDF support without addon upgrades.
The ones you sell, do they come with that firmware?
Also, is it possible to get one with a US power supply ?
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The ones you sell, do they come with that firmware?
Also, is it possible to get one with a US power supply ?
If you select the link in AmigaKit's message, you'll go to the order page which clearly lists a US power supply as a choice for the order, along with additional memory etc.
Bob
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We can pre-flash it with the firmware for you before shipping.
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Changing the firmware is also not a big deel all you need is a PC with a serial port and a serial cable.
All software/firmware updates are open source and free, so you can apply the updates yourself as they are released. You just cant change the amount of ram on your own as it has to be soldered inplace.
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all good stuff. I still want to get a proper A1200 again, but with the indivision card,shipping etc, it comes out to a bit more money than the missus would appreciate at the moment, so the minimig seems a great solution
Thanks guys!
Another question, which I couldn't find poking around the documentation: It has 2 joystick input. Could I connect 2 mice (for Hired guns and Settlers) ?
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Is there any way to update the firmware? As if I were to pick one up (which is increasingly more tempting) all I have is an iMac and MacBook, leaving me with USB, Firewire, Ethernet and modem ports :(
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There is a usb to serial cable you can pick up, it's usable with Mac too. The software part I'm not sure of though, you gotta check with some other minimig mac only owners.
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Okies, so there is hope perhaps.
Thanks!
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also, and this may be a dumb question.. can you use a CD32 pad with it in place of a joystick ? A few of my friends prefer pads to sticks and this thing will be mainly for multiplayer
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There is maybe a javaport of Tiny PIC bootloader which is the software needed for old minimig firmwares.
Check with users on http://www.minimig.net to see if anyone has used it.
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and yet another question, sorry.
I know the minimig has a normal VGA output. Anything particular to watch out for as far as monitors or will it work on pretty much any ?
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With the latest firmware, the standard Minimig (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=minimig) will provide HDF support without addon upgrades.
My Minimig is the 4MB version from amigakit.com.
I just upgraded the PIC and have loaded the YQ091224 firmware.
I don't see any options for HFD... What do I do?
thanks
-nate
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I have been a minimig owner for the last few weeks - I have to admit that its the best thing since er, the Amiga 500. True, it doesn't play AGA games but considering that most AGA games have OCS/ECS versions its not much of a problem. I have installed the latest firmware publicly available, compatability is quite high and most games I tried work. If it doesnt, usually trying the same game as released by some other cracking group would do the trick. For example with a particularly release of Stunt Car Racer, I kept getting bad graphics, so I tried another one and worked perfectly (interesting thing would be to test the first image in a real Amiga or UAE). A neat option in the latest release is that it lets you to do 'fast loading' for quicker loading times. I haven't actually checked side by side with a real amiga but its quite fast.
Another advantage of the minimig is that it comes with a scandoubler, and IF You can get a monitor that goes down to 50hz it would be great. I bought a Benq G2020HD widescreen monitor and it works great. Not only it syncs at 50hz with no problems and the pixels arent blurry at all, but it also has the option to display the image at 4:3 ratio, so the picture does nook squashed. The scrolling is great too.
I think the Minimig is a must have if you want to have a modern alternative to the A500. There are various upgrades to it such as a 4meg RAM upgrade and the ARM expansion (if you can find one), but I don't know if they are worth investing in (these upgrades are not exactly cheap), I like my vanilla Minimig as it is :)
I think the only piece of kit that maybe actually better be than the minimig would be the Clone-A, but we haven't heard fresh news on this for years now, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
One question from my site... is the firmware with HDF support for vanilla minimigs publicly available yet?
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Another question, which I couldn't find poking around the documentation: It has 2 joystick input. Could I connect 2 mice (for Hired guns and Settlers) ?
You can connect two Amiga mice but neither of them will work with the current firmware. Only one PS/2 mouse is supported.
also, and this may be a dumb question.. can you use a CD32 pad with it in place of a joystick ? A few of my friends prefer pads to sticks and this thing will be mainly for multiplayer
The hardware designer of the Minimig board omitted one signal at the joystick ports which is necessary for additional buttons of a CD32 pad to work. So these pads can only work as standard 2-button joysticks. You can also use a Sega Genesis/Megadrive pad but to have working two buttons you need to swap two wires inside the pad.
I know the minimig has a normal VGA output. Anything particular to watch out for as far as monitors or will it work on pretty much any ?
To be able to run the Minimig in PAL mode the monitor must be able to sync down to 50 Hz (only some monitors are capable of this).
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My Minimig is the 4MB version from amigakit.com.
I just upgraded the PIC and have loaded the YQ091224 firmware.
I don't see any options for HFD... What do I do?
thanks
-nate
you need to switch ON A600 IDE emulation (in another menu), save configuration, and then restart it completely
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you need to switch ON A600 IDE emulation (in another menu), save configuration, and then restart it completely
This is with the YQ091224 firmware, right?
I see no option in any menu for "A600 IDE emulation"
Thanks,
-nate
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This is with the YQ091224 firmware, right?
I see no option in any menu for "A600 IDE emulation"
You need this new PIC firmware update http://www.minimig.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=272 for harddisk emulation without an ARM Addon board but be warned HD emulation with the PIC chip seems quite slow from the limited testing I did earlier today.
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To be able to run the Minimig in PAL mode the monitor must be able to sync down to 50 Hz (only some monitors are capable of this).
50 ? Bugger. Im pretty sure mine can't :( Hmm
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Probably depends how old your TFT monitor is a year ago about 90% of the ones I tested seemed to work Ok with Amiga scandoublers as 50 Hz, but I was testing the ones purchased by businesses from Dell, Lenovo and Comapaq.
Most on paper should have had problems but worked fine but they were all non wide screen models. Finding wide screen TFT panels that work OK with PAL scandoubled inputs seems to be much harder, but if you have a non wide screen TFT panel purchased a year or 2 ago you may be OK.