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

[whiteb]

What is it with people and "OMG gotta have USB".

You will need around 200Mhz for USB, Then you want IDE, 128MB of ram, AGA and all that, why not just Design a totally new board.  Oh and yes, of course you only want to pay US$30.

[whiteb]

Crom00 wrote:
Hey Guys is there a link for all the parts needed for the board? The factory is asking for a Bill of Materials. I have the info for the cardboard, esd bag, and packing, and what will be included but they want a list of all the parts used to make poulate the board with part numbers and manufacturers listed. Is there such a list. Must be if folks are making their own boards...

Go get the Schematic PDF on Dennis's website, and give it to them, along with the PCB.

It has all the Resistor and capacitor values.

If they are *ANY GOOD* at their business, they can work it out from that.

[whiteb]

Crom00: Just make sure they understand the Pic's have to be programmed before being mounted on the PCB

[whiteb]

I cant see why I couldn't do it, I got 5 boards on order (Being fabbed) but the FPGA's are on Backorder till the end of October.

I'll have to sit down and do some sums (And see if my Soldering person will accept just a couple of boards), but it will be AT LEAST 100 quid each.

[whiteb]

Eclipse wrote:
Be careful of giving working prototypes to Chinese companies if you don't have a contract or own a copyright.
Chinese electronics firms have been known to copy and mimick items which have then been seen for sale at a vastly reduced rate.

Come on, you cant tell me that Dennis does not have intellectual property rights on the minimig ?

After all, Dennis released it to the community in a way called OpenSource.

If the Chinese can take ONE or Two popped Minimigs, and churn out 10,000+ are you REALLY against that ?  I do not think you would complain.  Just remember, the board is based around one specific FPGA, are there currently 10,000 spare Units ?, definitely not at Digikey there is not.

[whiteb]

Oh come on give him a break, I can see where he is coming from, but thats why Dennis released it to "The community".

To develop it in any way they see fit, as long as Dennis get a mention in recognition for his efforts.

[whiteb]

And I am still waiting for PCB's from Nusim.

[whiteb]

jorkany wrote:

Reducing costs is paramount for US toy companies. The low cost of munufacturing in Asia, allows US firms to have elaborate stateside showroom trade show displays, big ad budgets, and take care of the US employees, managers and executives.

It also allows US companies to circumvent state and federal manufacturing regulations, which is why the cost is so much less in China. IMO, companies that produce overseas and sell in the US should be paying fines equal to what they would receive if they circumvented regulations here in the US - that is, the loophole should be closed.

You mean, like Walmart continuing to sell Lead based Thongs (FlipFlops) despite people being *SEVERELY* burned.  Even going as far as Marking them down to $2 instead of Recalling them ?

They eventually did, after several months.

[whiteb]

Okay, so what we are talking about here, for all those that are interested, will be a FULLY POPPED board, but without a case ? and controller, meaning without any Joysticks and stuff.

Just the board, with all the components.

Batteries not included

[edit] and for those waiting for parts and stuff from the UK, during the Postal industrial action.... (Myself included)./

British high court has *JUST* ruled any more strikes are *OUTLAWED*.

[whiteb]

Tomas wrote:
@Crom00
So what do i have to do to it to get it fully working? Is the only thing needed to send over a rom image and then you are pretty much good to go? If so, then what is the process really? sd card wtih rom image? needing to burn/program a chip manually or what?

Thanks in advance.

SD-Card will need a MINIMUM of 2 files, kick.rom (ummm, i wonder what this is), and minimig1.bin (The FPGA Core).
On the card, you can put whatever you want on it in adf format.  Bearing in mind that the SD Card file system is Fat-16, where the filenames are a MAXIMUM of 8.3 (Who remembers DOS ?)

What crom is saying, is you will get a fully popped board, just add a 5V powerpack, and the loaded SD Card and away you go.

You will need (at this stage) to supply your own PS2 Keyboard and mice, and/or Joysticks.

From what I understand, the necessary chips on the board will be Pre-programmed (Pic).  

What happens is thus..., you power on the minimig, Pic reads the MMC, loads the Core into FPGA, Resets itself, Core loads Kick.rom from MMC, and resets and Boots into Kickstart.

Now, it is up to the individual to Source the Kick.rom themselves, either from an operation Amiga, or via commercial avenues, like Amiga Forever which has copies of kickstart.

[whiteb]

little wrote:

filenames are a MAXIMUM of 8.3 (Who remembers DOS ?)

FAT 16 has support for up to 255 characters filenames with LFN :rtfm:. What I would like to know is if the PIC program has LFN support :-?

Check the source out then ?  

http://home.hetnet.nl/~weeren001/downloads/minimig1_firmware_15_07_2007.zip

[whiteb]

CD32Freak wrote:

Anyone outside the UK willing to part with at least one bare PCB to further this cause?

Well, I live in The Netherlands and I've got a white minimig for you to help things going, but it's rev 1.0 :-( Would that be alright?

Is that the one with Silkscreen on one side  :lol: I have not forgotten that

[whiteb]

Crom00 wrote:
Continuing to get word back frm factoires, they are having problems sourcing the ram and the following parts:
the cost does not include IC9 & IC5, IC6 & 7 Ram.

Where have y'all been getting your parts, I'll pass the info along. I suspect they're using asian suppliers hence the sourcing issues.

IC5 - FPGA, Digikey (Who are also having supply issues, Estimated Lead time, December 07)
IC9 - 68000, Digikey (245 in stock)
IC6 & IC7 - RAM, Digikey (130 in stock, 65 minimig's worth).

If they are looking for the Original StaticRam from Minimig 1.0, then yes, its Obsolete, thats why Dennis moved to Asynchronous Sram.  They need to look for IC SRAM 8MB ASYNC 44-TSOPII (IS62WV51216BLL-55TLI)

[whiteb]

amigadave wrote:
@sir_inferno,

Don't you lick all your PCBs before you start soldering? :lol:

Tastes like Commodore chicken lips!    :crazy:

Yeah, didn't you know that Saliva works better than Solder flux ?

[whiteb]

Crom00 wrote:
If someone REALLY knows a factory in the US, Tawian, or wherever that they prefer and know that can handle this kind of work, send me the info. I have no problems swithcing factories if it makes sense.

I am sure there are, I know of one or two here in Australia that do it, but the difference being, you will probably pay 10 times the price.

I enquired about getting a run of Minimig PCB's done here in Australia when I was not sure what was happening with my Nusim boards.

The cheapest I could get, was like AU$250 for a run of 10, instead of about $US50 from a chinese run.

You can get things done back in the more civilised countries, it just costs more.  Why do companies send their production to China and india ?, something called "50c a day".

anyway, Crom, quit playing Elfmania