Contaced a Factory in China about producing a run of fully populated Mini-migs

[Hattig]

50,000 units might be a big stretch!

1,000 ... yeah, I think you could shift them over time - enough to be profitable, especially if someone developed a C64 core, an Atari 8-bit core and an Atari ST core, and it came with some licensed games. I guess you could even get a Megadrive core implemented... but you'd never get any games.

But for orders being taken via web forums? 100 assembled boards, maybe 200. But better to take a risk with the V1.1, whereas you would probably want the V2 design complete for any larger run.

However a company might decide to fabricate the Verilog into a proper chip with a 68k core, and create a proper product out of it. FPGAs aren't cheap, but a <20mm^2 chip is, made in suitable quantities. Again, let's get V2 designed first!

[Hattig]

I'm in two minds about creating an ASIC...

For a mass produced "Amiga in a Joystick" device, yes, it will cut costs drastically, and I'm sure that the 68k would also be incorporated into the ASIC if this was done (I don't see it happening soon).

However the programmable nature of the current design appeals to me. I like the idea of eventually being able to emulate pretty much any 8-bit computer on the FPGA directly, and 68k based systems as well (although the Atari ST ran at 8MHz, so the MiniMig design would need to take that into account somehow because it is clocked slightly slower - that or clock it at 14.3MHz by default).

[Hattig]

alexh wrote:
Dont worry you wont be doing it, at between £30,000 to £1,000,000 NRE per ASIC only a large company will be looking at this.

Of course, that's why I think it is a long way off, if ever. Plenty of time for debugging, adding ECS, maybe even AGA.