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

[little]

This sounds very, very interesting. I am curious, did you asked for an estimate up to 1000 units? I ask because at the freescale site that the is the minimum amount you must buy to get the "budget price" for the 68000. I know that quantity is pretty big for an "open project", but with quantity prices lowers and it would be feasible for more people to get their board and maybe add an extra "contribution" of say 10 USD per board to fund the AROS project. Also, will there be a minimig 2.0? Maybe it will be better to wait a little, specialy if it will include supoort for DDR RAM (32mb? 64mb? 128mb?), a pc floppy disk connector (to read those protected disks like the catweasel), RTC and maybe a wifi and/or USB interface.

Anyway, thanks for looking into it, I will keep reading :-)

[little]

... we were not allowed develop a product with Integrated Circuts if orders totalled less than 50,000 units.

O_o wow, we are no longer in kansas toto ^^; But I think the minimig might sell that amount of units. Because if enough people get interested in it, it can be lots of things with some changes. It has the potential to become an atari st, or a classic macintosh or a x68000 all in a nice little package that you can plug and unplug without much hassle.

[little]

... but you'd never get any games.

That is why I think that for version 2.0 it is important to add a floppy drive connector (and maybe a usb connector for a cd-rom). It would add legitimacy to the proyect, people could not say "it is a machine that can only run pirate copies". Just thinking out loud :-)

[little]

What is it with people and ... USB".

IMO at some moment people will get interested in adding compatibility with CDTV, CD-i, Sega CD, NeoGeo CD, Turbo CD, etc. so an interface to plug a CD-ROM would be needed (it is feasible to use the memory card, but adding the capability of using real CDs will add legitimacy to the hardware). SCSI is legacy technology, SATA is so new there are no cheap CD-ROM drives for it. That leaves IDE or USB and in my opinion the later is harder to implement but can be used for other peripheals later on so it would be the best choice.

You will need around 200Mhz for USB

No you don't, I remember someone hacked an USB port into his (unaccelerated) A1200 and it worked albeit it did not reached the maximum USB 1.1 speeds, but IDE would be just as slow.

Then you want IDE

It would be redundant with the SD and USB interfaes.

128MB of ram

Would be nice :-D

AGA

Would be nice for some workbench applications, albeit I do not think it could run 32 bits apps/games/CD32.

why not just Design a totally new board

I name thy minimig 2.0 :-D

of course you only want to pay US$30.

I think that if a price range between 50 and 99 USD for a machine without a floppy drive or CD-ROM drive or keyboard or mouse but with a simple case, a 5 volts DC adapter, a sega genesis joystick and a SD card with some games, an AROS kickstart and OS would sell like the C64 Direct-to-TV. Maybe I am dreaming, I know :-)

[little]

It costs several thousand dollars (conservative est.) to produce the tooling molds for a case. This does not include the design, prototype and debug. No way you can get a low run board with a case for $50-99.

*puts thinking cap on*

Call me crazy, but why not use the 1chipMSX case?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:OCM_007.jpg

It has:

2 RCA audio outputs
RCA Composite video output
S-Video video output
VGA video output
PS/2 keyboard connector
2 USB connector
2 DE9 Joystick ports
220V adapter or 110V converter plug

more photos here:

http://www.bazix.nl/onechipmsx.html

The only drawback I see is that only has one ps/2 port, but some PC laptops use have only one ps/2 port but a Y adapter can be used to connect a mouse and a keyboard.

[little]

are you mad.

Quite :-o

dvd-burner sata ddrive for £20 ($40)

AFAIK there are no cd-roms for SATA and  I can get an IDE CD-ROM for about $13 USD. When I talk cheap I mean it :-D

[little]

claim that the device promotes pirating of the Amiga IP

If you mean the Amiga™ they are called mimimigs and if that fails then call them Amante :-D

threatens Amiga patents

If you mean hardware patents they have no legal case, reproducing the chip functionality without being an exact copy is legal, since AMD makes Intel x86 chips and how Intel makes AMD x86-64 compatible chips. There would be a legal case if  the zorro I/II/III interface was used.

promotes piracy etc. though use of the kickstart roms and ADF files

That is why a floppy interface is so important, remember you can load the kickstart from original amiga floppies. not to mention the operative system and 3rd party software. If reading adf is litigious then do not include it, anyone can add it later on the same way people install virtual floppy drive. Also, if the AROS kickstart is never created maybe there can be an "Amiga Forever, MMC edition" :-?

Imainge a container loaded with Min-Migs

If we are talking about a thousand boards then we are speaking of a big box. Also, at least for the time being this is an "open project" so it would be more difficult for Amiga inc. to get litagious actions when there is no corporation or company, just individuals; it would be a pain in the fenny to track a thousand names, addresses, etc.

they own that design and the tooling, you still have to tool your own case since the board layout of the Mini-Mig is not the same as the MSX.

AFAIK no one is using it and I bet the company that made the plastic molds would gladly produce a thousand pieces to whoever asked for them. As for the differing layout, remember it is really a piece of plastic with a bunch of wholes, I think there is enough space for an internal 3 1/2" floppy drive

A design that removes the need for purchasing the mc68000 would be better.

That probably would be difficult, getting a bigger FPGA is too costly and it would be difficult to add a 68000 software core and leave space to continue to add funtionality.

BTW, I am only speaking my mind, but I am no lawyer nor verilog programmer, anyone with indepth knowledge feel free to punch me into submission ^^;

[little]

How will a game for A500 OCS that expect say an Amiga keyboard, and not an usb one interface?, Some hardware will have to translate, and the m68k will be 100% busy with the game software.

As I undestand it, adding a USB 1.1 interface or a Wifi interface would necesarily need extra hardware (as in "one chip that deals with that interface") unless you limit the USB interface to only slow devices (like mice, keyboard and joystick which are redundante in the minimig).

[little]

Not sure what the price point of a minimig 1.1 would be but Im sure I could find out!

We will await your price quote, here are the schematics:

http://home.hetnet.nl/~weeren001/downloads/minimig11_schematics.pdf

:-D

[little]

I was asked about testing procedure. So I assume we will also need beta testers and software to test the units on the production line.

It will be very important that someone with a working minimig to provide a sample list of working software, since at this moment what works on a real amiga 500 or in UAE does not necesarily work flawlessly in the minimig, specialy games and nothing would be more frustrating for the people at the china factory than to see a guru error/garbled graphics and/or sound on a correctly assembled minimig.

[little]

Is it possible to create all-in-one Structured ASIC or Easic (e-beam) based on Minimig design?

Yes it would, but IMO it would be a bad idea:

1. The FPGA allows for bug-fixing. ATM the minimig OCS is not 100% compatible with the one in the amiga 500, as more people experienced in verilog get their minimigs this situation will improve, gradually.

2. The FPGA allows upgrading. Chances are that people will also work in an ECS and AGA implementation (both are 16 bits chipsets) and maybe even an AGA+.

3. The FPGA allows versatility. The minimig design allows for the emulation of other 68k based computers, consoles (this would require more ram) and arcade games (this would require even more ram).

[little]

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

If I undestood correctly from other posts in this board, the 68000 used in the minimig is the 20 mhz version, so atm it is underclocked to 7 mhz but the clock can be changed to suit diferent systems and even overclocked to 28mhz.

[little]

AGA is 32-bit asfaik.

Apart from the graphics data fetches, AGA still operated on 16-bit data only, meaning that a lot of bandwidth was wasted during register accesses and copper and blitter


Of course only AGA games/applications that used the 68EC020 as a 68000 would have any chances of working at all, at least that is how I undestand it.

[little]

At the very least the next feature added should be UAE hard file support.

I do not know if it is posible with minimig 1.1, but it is a two in one feature:

1. Ability to read from UAE hard files
2. Ability to write to floppies and hard files.

Also, since it seems it is getting harder to obtain the small (in capacity) RAM chips, could someone please tell me if it feasible to add bigger (in capacity) chips? 4mb should be the minimum IMHO.

[little]

The Amiga's chipset can only address 2MB maximum.

I was thinking about 512 kb kickstart + 512 kb chip RAM + 3MB Fast RAM or any other combination that gave a total of 4 MB; instead of the actual 512 kb kickstart + 512 kb chip RAM + 1 MB Fast RAM.