Alexh has a point I have understood from the beggining. ATM the minimig is a nice project for enthusiasts. To become really an option it has to be mass-produced to reduce the price, like the direct-c64 thing. Only then the advantages will outweight the cost. That is why insist it is important to simplify the design by "inserting" the cpu in a xcs3500e spartan fpga and removing the pic by using the SPI functionality to load directly from the SD/MMC stick.
