MiniMig V 2.0 - board interest check for a PCB order

[Illuwatar]

I'm planning a PCB order for the MiniMig 2.0 final version, but I need to get a feeling of the numbers. The price of a PCB is totally dependent on the amount ordered (10 boards = €25 each, 25 boards = €14 each, shipping and handling added). Before ordering, I need payment in advance (specially if the numbers exceed 10 units) but to give a proper price, I need to know how many boards to order.

So, please mark your interest in this thread (one entry per "buyer"). Also vote for black or blue... (color does not affect price). For this order, it doesn't matter if you would like PCB only (and assemble the board yourself) or a complete unit - both needs the same PCB.

[Illuwatar]

Yes - the updated Mini-ITX version.

[Illuwatar]

I haven't decided for a price yet for a fully working unit. But in the range of €250-300 maybe - it involves a lot of manual work to build one single board (several hours of hand soldering). Of course, larger numbers makes cheaper boards. And if someone could recommend a part source that is cheaper than Digikey, it would be even better.

All information including part list and schematics are at my homepage (www.illuwatar.se).

[Illuwatar]

Acube needs at least 50 boards to start production. I have already sent them that question...

Crom00 - that could be a way as it seems like most people prefer a working board.

[Illuwatar]

By judging from the replies, most people prefer a working unit. So, reaching these 10-limit should not be an issue.

Crom00 - how could we arrange this?


And about all this improvements with memory, FPGA and so on - these was never intended for this design. The whole idea was to keep it 100% compatible with the Dennis design and only change or add stuff that was missing on the original board (specially the power supply side). The Mini-ITX form factor was selected due to it is a standard (Dennis board is the same size a a Nano-ITX but the hole pattern and connectors are note to standard). The 170 x 170 mm board size is little bit oversize for this design (reason for the empty areas), but that is a side effect when a standard is used.

When the constraints of a design are removed, the result becomes different. Look at the Mini MiniMig at my home page. I don't think you can shrink that design even more and keep the current parts (specially the FPGA-CPU-RAM combo). Going smaller will require a BGA style FPGA, soft-core for the MC68000 and BGA memory chips. That design instantly rules out DIY for most people. As I have seen, there are several members of this forum that are cooking up new designs for the MiniMig - keep an eye on them (I'm certainly going to do that).

[Illuwatar]

I did it a 2.0 as the board is totally re-routed. The only thing I reused from the 1.0 was the board outline and hole template... there are more behind this that aren't on the list. I also hope this is the final for this line of boards. Any further development will be the Mini MiniMig and all these "dream machines" people wants. Yesterday, I placed the last test run order to do a final verification of the design. Five blue boards will show up in approx. two weeks.

Reading the thread, I found that seven people prefers a blank PCB if I can get the 25-price and four wants a complete running unit.

[Illuwatar]

Sorry for not being active on this for a while, but mu mother just went away this week after two years of fight against cancer. So, as it is now, the MiniMig isn't top priority.

But the project will not stop - just some delay. And there are five board made blue on the way (these will be the final verification run before they are considered final - and I want to see how the blue comes out compared with the black). One of the current issues now is the FPGA - Digikey had zero in stock when I needed a few at the last order. So, if someone could find a cheap and reliable source for these (and the other expensive parts: SRAM, CPU, PIC and video converters/buffers) would be nice.

[Illuwatar]

Thank You - this is rather some hard time now, specially as the funeral has to wait to until after Christmas.

But to light up some shine in this darkness, I put a 10ns board together using the Cypress SRAM that was earlier recommended in this thread (managed to get some samples from Cypress). And the experiment seems to be a success: I ran one of my favorite games, SilkWorm, for a few hours without any problems (using the original updated core from Dennis). And yes, the game is still as fun as it was in the good old days...

And the blue boards have been shipped from PCBCart...

[Illuwatar]

Update: got the blue boards today. And they are just awesome! Those who prefers blue did not get it wrong, specially with the yellow print - a true Swedish product...:-)





Note that the color may be little off due to the poor lighting when the pics was taken.

I have five of these... (and no FPGAs :-( )