Many of you still haven't heard about this great Amiga clone in development. Read up and donated to make this a reality in 2014!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/armiga-projectFrom the Indiegogo Campaign
Wouldn't it be great to be able to use all those aging Amiga disks again?
Maybe the original Amiga is a bit big and video quality not so good... A smaller version, with modern connections would be awesome, isn't it?. That's what we've done: take modern technology and make it work with good old floppies.
The machine, which we call, the Armiga, is a beautiful piece of modern technology.
It's built around a modern Dual Core ARM CPU, that plays together with our custom made floppy controller. This is the key of the machine: We've developed our own controller, able of reading Amiga disks, decode them and make them available for executing. Sounds simple, right?
The base Armiga aims to emulate the original Amiga 500 with 1MB of RAM as close as possible to the original one.
And for you not to get your hands dirty, an fully legal copy of Kickstart 1.3 is provided with every Armiga! :O
Features: We really want this to be an awesome product!. But for that we'll need your help. Lots of functionalities are in the backlog, waiting for the needed funds. However,
your Armiga will come with these features built in: - Full Amiga 500 emulation: The target machine is the iconic Amiga 500 and right now 90% of the disks are running!
- Boot to Android: Armiga supports Dual Boot and comes loaded with Android 4.2.2, so when you're not playing you can have all the power of Android!.
- Automatic disk load: Like in the original Amiga; insert the disk and off you go!.
- Disk dump: Create ADF images of your favorite games and keep them safe on the SD.
- ADF support: Bring your own ADF images on a pendrive or SD card and enjoy!
- Disk swap: Just insert the disk and it will be dumped. When time comes to change disks, just select the right ADF. Ain't it easy?.
- FTP server: No need to take the SD off to manage the ADFs; just do it from your computer!.
- Graphical menu: Simple and elegant, with usability as main focus.
- Game save: Save your game and resume later.
- Autosave: Forgot to save?. We do it for you!
- Screenshot: Wanna share your joy?. Give our screenshot feature a try.
Apart from our custom software that lets you play physical disks and images, t
he Armiga comes loaded with Android 4.2.2, so you can have access to a huge world of Apps and games:
- Surf the web
- Check your email
- Watch your movies
- Keep in touch with social networks
- ...
With Android built in, opportunities are endless!
However, we would really love to increase the functionalities way further, so funding goals have been defined!
The rewards We want everyone to have a taste of Armiga!. From the low budgets that can proudly show their support wearing an Armiga t-shirt to the enthusiasts that want to be part of the final development stage of the product and join our beta-program.
For those that just want to get the
final retail Armiga, we have two options:
- The Armiga: If you already have an SD card, a power source and HDMI cable around, this is for you!. You'll get a brand new Armiga to plug all that stuff to and start traveling back in time :D. We'll provide all the software in our webpage.
- The Armiga Deluxe Edition: For those that don't want to mess around, but just want everything in the box, this fits like a glove. In addition to the Armiga, you get a fast SD card with our software loaded, the power connector and all the cables, plus an exclusive t-shirt :O
And for the Enthusiasts:
- The Armiga Beta Edition: However, if you are a real enthusiast and want to be part of this milestone in history (sort of ;D), our beta program is for you. You'll get everything in the Armiga Deluxe Edition, plus a micro-controller programmer, so you get everything you need. In addition, you'll get early access to all software updates before they are released and feedback submission straight to the development team, for 1 whole year!
- The Armiga controller: If you are tight on budget or just want to play around with some hardware, you can also purchase the Armiga controller. Here is where the magic happens: our own custom-made piece of hardware that understands the Amiga disks. This controller is compatible with all kind of systems that have a serial port, but is specially suited for the Raspberry Pi, which has been our first prototype platform. We'll provide software for:
- Raspberry Pi: Just plug it in the GPIO header.
- PC-Linux: You'll most likely need a USB-to-TTL converter.
- OSX: As in Linux, USB-to-TTL converter may be needed.
Whatever reward you choose,
please "buy energy drinks" for our developers!. They are struggling to develop the most amazing pieces of software and help make the Armiga an even greater breakthrough.
Project goals Armiga is already a great machine, but we can make it even better with your help!
Take it in account that
this is a hardware and manufacture intensive project and over 70% of the budget is already gone in components and then comes the taxes, so there's very little margin for improving what we already have.
However, we have some great ideas we want to bring into the Armiga and to help achieve this, we kindly invite you to
"buy some energy drinks" for the development team (please see the rewards).
Most of these goals require lots of investigation and testing, so please don't take them for granted. We'll do our best to achieve them and funding amounts are just for presenting the relative complexity of them. But one this is for sure:
if we made it to $1 Million (wishful thinking, hey), everything will be OpenSource and OpenHardware! 
Side Notes Armiga is nice, right?. However, nothing in this world is perfect and, at least, we want to be 100% transparent, so here are the side notes about the product:
- Currently, Armiga does only read and dump unprotected/cracked games. Copy protection was quite an art in the times of the Amiga and it's difficult to overcome. However, one of our funding goals is focused on this.
- We are extremely happy on how the Armiga performs and it's been solidly able to read more than 90% of the disks that we tested and worked in a real Amiga 500, but keep in mind some games, which are less than 10%, may not work straight from your disk :(. However, we'll keep on pushing the envelope and trying to make these figures better before the product is shipped :D
- Manufacturing a product outside China is expensive...; really expensive. And selling them worldwide is not cheaper, so please understand delivery rates, import fees and any other expense are not included in the price. That's not money for the project, but for the postal service and/or local authorities.
Disclaimer: This project is not related in any way to Commodore or Amiga. Commodore, Amiga, Kickstart, Amiga Forever, Atari, Atari ST, Megadrive, NeoGeo, Raspberry, Raspberry Pi, OSX and any other trademarks named in this campaign are
copyrighted by their respective owners.
