Minimig status?

[freqmax]

I have been away for a long while on Minimig issues, so I just wondering on project status. :-D

1) When does the remaining AGA, and other patents expire?
2) Anything interesting in regards to Bill & amiga. Or just noise as usual?
3) Is virtual floppy writing supported properly by now?
4) Is NTSC output working properly?
5) Any interesting new Minimig style project besides Clone-A, fpgaarcade, NatAmi, Illuwatar 2.0?
6) Harddisc works? (likely as virtual disc-on-flash-file )
7) Ethernet network support? (sana compat?)
Status on softcore 68000, any developments on softcore 68020 ..?
9) Dram (SDRam) support, this would enable ~20 times more memory for the same money?
10) Has any new worthwhile non-bga FPGA chips showed up to explore? :-D

[freqmax]

mikej, I think you should keep the board to an absolute minimum. There's a lot of "good-to-have" and we all know the space and resources eaten by such strategy

Better have plenty of free I/O in a manner that allows multiple expansions. And then use this for whatever need that shows up. This is THE benefit of FPGA. Unlike static designation of each pin as before, you can now use it for just about anything.

Your (fpgaarcade) board should definitely be able to reimplement an Atari-ST. I think it could wake some memories for some music artists..

[freqmax]

When the current softcore 68000 cpu is modded into 68020, and some working softcore AGA is created.
It might be possible to create some AGA core that looks alright from a software point. That don't actually perform all  operations. To get a starting point without software freezes.

[freqmax]

The reason to re-implement stuff like 68020 and AGA might not be new functionality per se. But to make sure there's a duplicate before all original parts that can be reverse engineered are broken or overpriced.

There time is not free in this matter. It might not simple be feasable to reverse engineer the chips later.

[freqmax]

RS-232 compliant signaling?, use 2x a charge pump chip like max232 to fix it?