Minimig Case

[Darrin]

Bloody hell, just show us the smegging case.  It's not the Crown Jewels you know.

[Darrin]

TheDaddy wrote:
The rest is under protective film. Tomorrow it's going back to the manufacture to have some things rectified.

 :-)

Damn, I hate waiting.

On the plus side, I got my updated PIC from Amigakit and it's in the Minimig and working.

[Darrin]

TheDaddy wrote:.

Excellent! Any more news on compatibility improvements?

I so want to play Superfrog, SWOS and Speedball 2 on my Minimig in its new shiny case!  :-)

I haven't done much with it yet as I'm fighting with my A4000 trying to get it to work right with a new Fast ATA 4000 board (I think it might not like these 80GB hard drives - although it was happy to partition one of them into 18 x 4GB chunks when I first ran it).

I did retry Rodland (the right hand screen is still missing) and Menace (shield still run down).  I think the work Denis did was on games that wouldn't load so I need to try the games in my "buggered" folder when I get a chance.

[Darrin]

AJCopland wrote:
But what does it look like?

It doesn't matter.  I've got a feeling that the final cost is going to make most people run for the hills in terror.

[Darrin]

TheDaddy wrote:

You are right Darrin.

It's definately going to cost more than any other enclosure seen for the minimig, that is for sure.

I'm not knocking you for doing this, it's just that I'm worried you're going to lose some serious money.

Let's assume you manage a minimum order of 50 units.  Let us also assume you want to make at least $1000 for your trouble and recover some costs.  That means you're going to have to charge $20 ontop of unit costs (or $25 if you're planning on paying taxes on it).

As you sold a car to finance this, I think you're probably looking for $5000 or more, so that's $100-$125 on each case.

OK, so you have people saying they'll pay $200 a case, but there's a big difference between people who say they'll pay and people who will pay.

[Darrin]

Amiduffer wrote:
C'mon Darrin, in the history of people who have invented products, its normal to put everything into something and not get an immediate return.

Just ask Elias Howe, who had to go seriously in debt and wait decades before people accepted the sewing machine.

Yeah, but I think there was a bigger market for sewing machines then than there is for $200 Minimig cases now.

What hurts this project is the fact that the Minimig formfactor is so unique and it is only houses Minimig v1.0 and v1.1 boards.  Perhaps if the design can be adapted to house an Efika without the production company charging the same development costs then future projects will help to recover the costs of this first venture.

[Darrin]

arnljot wrote:
@Darrin

$ is toy money now-a-days, he said €...

Strange, I get paid in US$ and I seem OK.  ;-)

[Darrin]

TheDaddy wrote:
@Darrin
True, but my target is less than that for two reasons:

1) I wouldn't feel comfortable charging $200-300 for a case
2) I worked my backside off to cut all the nice features and save costs, although this is a challenge a designer loves.

>>What hurts this project is the fact that the Minimig formfactor is so unique and it is only houses Minimig v1.0 and v1.1 boards. Perhaps if the design can be adapted to house an Efika without the production company charging the same development costs then future projects will help to recover the costs of this first venture.

The sketches I have made for the Efika are not too dissimilar, we'll see.

If the meeting goes well and I can keep the price at around 85 Euros ($135 or £65 GBP) I would be quite happy and with me the people who buy it. :-)

I have this feeling that they'll say things like:"Have you included your time, your expenses, phone calls, days off work) which I haven't...

My main worry is starting production, reaching 50 sales (pre-orders) otherwise is Ciao, ciao

 :-)

It's just a shame that you've put in so much work if you don't get some sort of reward at the end.  Mind you, perhaps seeing people want to put a Minimig in your case will be reward enough for you.

I'm more worried about people saying things like "does that $135 include the motherboard, PSU and an SD card?"  ;-)

When you finally show the case pictures, can you also show the original design so we can see how much had to be lost to keep the cost down?  I'd really like to see your "ultimate Minimig" case concept.

[Darrin]

arnljot wrote:

And I sympatize with them, But a new wedgie for the A1200 doesn't make sense. Either you have a working A1200 in a Tower or a wedgie, or you have a broken A1200 in a wedgie or a tower. Either way you do not need a new custom case for it. You might want one, but you do not need one...

I've got 2 A1200 Towers and I have to say that I would like a case were I can house the A1200 mobo, mount a CD ROM drive and a couple of hard drives to my FastATA, access all the ports and still have it in a "wedge-like" design.  In other words, either a thicker (taller) wedge case design to mount the drives below or above the mobo or some sort of "shelf" behind the keyboard.

Unless you're using a Mediator or similar (or you have a fetish for hard drives), the typical A1200 tower has a lot of wasted space that will never be used.

[Darrin]

arnljot wrote:

Yup, just couldn't help my self. I'm not doing so okay, because US ebay and Amazon is getting more and more tempting with their offers due to the current exchange rate...

I know what you mean.  My brother lives in England and he ordered a Laptop for one of his sons from a USA website as it was about a third of the price it would have been in the UK at the current exchange rate.  He had it delivered to my house and I said I'd mail it to him.  UPS charged me $217 to mail it to him ("We have a special on today sir, and you get 10% off!") and then he was charged 85 quid when he received it for importation tax.  It still worked out a couple of hundred pounds cheaper for him.

[Darrin]

TheDaddy wrote:

What would make me happy would be seeing the compatibility issues sorted and writing to ADFs to save a game position.

I would be quite happy with that. I am having so much fun playing the classic games from the Minimig, it sits nicely on the desk, stick the card in and off you go...nice :-)

That update should be out soon.  The guy working on it said we could see it by the end of this month.  Hopefully his estimate will still be correct.

[Darrin]

TheDaddy wrote:

It's mostly because of the yellowing and some would like a bit more space, enought for an internal CD-ROM.

Exactly.  There's some "space saver" PC wedge designs available for purchase with a side mounted CD ROM.  That sort of case would suit me.  With enough clearance, there should be room to squeeze in that CD ROM and a 2.5" or 3.5" hard drive (or 2) plus a clockport USB card.

[Darrin]

TheDaddy wrote:

Just what I have been asked recently.

Got a few sketches down already, but Minimig has priority. :-)

Well I think you have more chance of making some money off an A1200 case (or even an A500 or A600) case as there are more people with those mobos.

Considering the cost of an Elbox Tower ($250 + shipping), you should be able to undercut that to tempt people who really want to expand their A1200s, but who either don't want to spend that much money or find huge tower designs ugly.

[Darrin]

@ arnljot wrote:

There's some interesting ideas there.  I must admit that some sort of router to allow PC/PPC small form-factor mobos to be housed inside the A1200 case and have thier ports routed to the rear would be interesting.  I have an A1200 case which was turned into a USV PC keyboard for use with WinUAE using the KeyRah.  That same Keyrah could be used to send the USB cable back to the new mobo's USB ports so that the Amiga keyboard could be used (shame about F11 and F12).

If a new wedge design would work for the A1200, A500 and A600 with just a backplane adapter then that would be perfect to maximise sales.  I think the A1200 and A600 ports match up pretty good, but I'm not sure how close the A500 was.

[Darrin]

That's a nice looking case in that gloss white (especially when shown with that thin white keyboard).  It looks very professional (unlike my "nailed to a bottom of a PC keyboard" design).  :-D