MiniMig with AGA

[mikej]

I've been on holiday the last week, back on it end of this week.
Production is moving ahead as far as I know ...

[mikej]

Back from holiday so I will harass the production company.
It's certainly talking longer than I expected, but we are in the home straight now.
/Mike

[mikej]

I'm talking to another couple of SMD assembly companies here trying to get a slot.
It's daft, I could get 100+ made tomorrow in China, but I have the prototype parts at home and I need to get the first 10 then 50 made to prove the board is ok.
It is frustrating.
I can't finalize a price either until the assembly costs are nailed down - it is really really expensive to set this up.
Again, as soon as I know you guys will know.
/Mike

[mikej]

Replay RevB Pricing.

The exchange rates are all over the place, and until I get production scheduled and the boards in my hand these prices are subject to change.

The NRE costs for production are much higher than I expected, so I have to recover some of these costs over the first 50 boards.

So, the full card (with SVHS/Composite out) is looking like 220Euro today. The "light" card without SVHS/composite is 200Euro. Thats about the same as a Minimig with the memory upgrade, and what I've been saying all along.

The bad news is I have to pay sales tax here on the first boards, so thats an additional 25%. I'll include a EU plug power supply for the first 50 boards

Being totally honest up-front, boards after the first 50 will be at least 25% cheaper and sales tax will be payable on import if you are outside the EU so thats another 25%.

From the quotes I've been getting from China we should be able to get down to 150 Euros for the fully loaded board for production quantities, assuming there is enough interest after the first 50.

I have all the parts for the first 50 so they are going to happen for sure, after that I'll set up a list - if we get to 50 or more we'll do another run.

I'll mail all of you who have expressed an interested with a firm price when the board is finally ready for shipping.

Let me know what you think.
/Mike

[mikej]

True, but I don't want to commit all the parts for 50 boards without testing a few first.
Locally, I can get 10 made, test them and hopefully build the rest immediately.

If I got everything set up in China (set up cost is more expensive, per board cost a lot cheaper) then if there was a pcb issue I would have 50 scrap PCBs and have to pay the NRE again to fix the issue.

Cheers,
Mike

[mikej]

As things stand today, correct - although shipping is additional. Within the EU it is not much, the board is very small and light
/Mike

Hi Mike, Hi All,

I watched the wrong thread until now :
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35270&page=17

So the price for one of the 50 first run boards should be 200€ (Without Video Out) + 50€ for a EU sale with shipping and power supply ?

[mikej]

Good news, looks like I have found a company which can build these quite soon...I'll keep you posted.
/MikeJ

[mikej]

I would like one board... Would you ship one to Chile?

I'll ship anywhere.
The proto's (54) will be built in Scandinavia so I can assist with any issues.
After that we'll see.
/Mike

[mikej]

My consideration is mainly that any PCB layout bugs, presuming components are OK. If there is any layout mismatch even simple things like footprints. Then correcting 54 boards by hand is no easy task....

10 boards are built first. If they check out ok then the remaining boards are built while the SMD machines are still configured.

The differences to the RevA board are fairly small and I have already checked out all the footprints for the new bits (I have the PCB in front of me). The RevB board was always designed to be a low-risk change from the RevA...hopefully.

MikeJ

[mikej]

I have a couple techy questions about the FPGA Arcade board.

What FPGA doe sit use?(Sorry if I missed that)

.

It's a Xilinx Spartan3e 1600. It can re-configure itself by talking to the ARM controller which will reload it from the SD card.

/MikeJ

[mikej]

Good news.

The solder paste stencils have been ordered. These are expensive and needed for real production. The placement machines are being programmed....
/Mike

[mikej]

It's a shame one of the few remaining Amiga 'players' aren't involved with this promising product (eg AmigaKit, ACube, Vesalia, Jens) to get it out quickly and market it properly.

I have been approached by several distributors actually.

They don't add any value at the moment, until the design is complete and stable there is no point marketing it - there is quite enough vapor-ware in this industry already. I'm not interested until we have a product.

There is no problem ramping this to high volume production once we have the prototypes.

It is a generic platform, so next we have to decide what platforms will be available at launch. /Mike

[mikej]

Should happen this week. The missing connector I have been waiting ages for arrived today.

I am packing the kit of components now.
/Mike

[mikej]

Not quite. The board has a high quality Wolson DAC (WM8729) with a decent analogue supply. This supports 192KHz at 24 bit audio.

The core is modified to drive the DAC, and will be expanded later for more bit-depth hopefully.
Mike

[mikej]

Essentially we model the analog mixing and filtering digitially in the FPGA now. For now, the four outputs are multiplied together, a simple low pass digital filter applied and then clocked out to the DAC at a fixed sampling frequency.

You can stop and start the data clock to the DAC, so I can send a new sample whenever the Amiga values are updated - so we can approximate the timing of the original DAC.

This will be something which is improved over time, both in new features and more closely emulating the original output.
/Mike

[mikej]

The PCB assembler just sent me this :

"I am actually preparing the setup on the pick&place tonight. It's almost done, as I have all the component packages in the vision library already. So when I get the packet with the components,  I'll be ready to load the feeders and start the production. From the  optimization process, it looks like approx 6 minutes assembly per board, on the slowest of my machines. I will most likely run the boards on friday, and I will shoot a little video of the process"

The components seem to be taking quite a while to get there, but hopefully tomorrow.
I'll post a video of the assembly when I get it.

/Mike