Portable Amiga anyone??

[mitchd61]

I find something like that extremely interesting and I know a few others that probably would as well. I'm an old school gamer and Amiga user and think your concept is well worth developing. I didn't see any mention of WiFi. Have you considered that? Also I agree with the previous idea of going for a Pandora type look, but perhaps a little sleaker in form. I seem to recall seeing some concept art years ago of a hand-held type of Amiga. If you could find those they might inspire you.

[mitchd61]

Wifi hmmm, Maybe, would have to look into the cost.
I would prefer someone else to design the case, i see this project as a comunity project, so someone takes a seperate task, like designing the case etc.
Different people bring different skills and it gets the job done cheaper, and better IMHO... Cost is everything. for instance if the Iphone lcd was cheaper and better we could use that insted, mass produced parts is what we are looking for to keep the price at the minimum, i just like the size of the PSP lcd, and have a few with touchscreens attatched.
It would also be fully open source.
The pandora started the same way and has done very well.

Well, I'd definitely would be interested in working on some case design ideas once I had a fairly clear picture of the internal layout. The actual tooling of it is beyond me though. I simply don't have access to the needed tools and materials. As far as the screen goes, I like the PSP lcd as well. The screen on my PSPgo seems to be a bit sharper than my PSP-3000. However, I would imagine the PSPgo's is more expensive simply by virtue of being "newer" technology.

[mitchd61]

Using mass produced parts is the smartest thing to do, so if the entire design could be made to fit into an already existing case and display device, such as the PSP, or some other small hand-held gaming, music, or large cell phone, a new case would not have to be designed. That of course would only work if replacement cases and displays could be obtained at a reasonable cost. But it would make sense to me that replacement cases and display LCDs would most likely be much cheaper to obtain than a new case design for an existing .

As much as I would love to work on a case design, I have to agree with using mass produced parts to keep costs minimal. I'm pretty fired up about the whole concept though and a distinctively Amiga replacement case is something I'd still like to explore. Even if only for my own personal use.

[mitchd61]

So how about using the PSP case?
It has a large capacity battery, the correct size screen, analog joystick, dpad..
 
Slight mod for an sd card... there are lots of faulty ones on ebay for cheap...

It seems to me that would be the most straight forward approach. The only consideration would the variations in the PSP models. The PSP-1000 has a slightly bigger (thicker) design and would probably be a better choice by virtue of having more room to work with. I've had my PSP-1000 and 3000 both apart for case mods and the 1000 definitely has more room and the construction is sturdier as well.

[mitchd61]

I was quite interested up until you said that. Why is it so hard to include a tiny little qwerty keyboard and make the screen flipup like a tiny little laptop...

Are you thinking of something like this... http://ps3maven.com/psp-laptop-mod-keyboard/ It's a little rough, but uses readily available parts. A little refinement and voila!

[mitchd61]

Psp has mini-usb, headphones, 2 d-pads, analog joystick, and we can add tv out.
but it also uses a 4.3" lcd, is a nice hand size, has a good battery, wireless (if we can find out any info on it) a home button, volume buttons, select button, start button, plus a few more buttons, and they are very cheap from ebay faulty. Not the newer ones the old 1003's. The udm is useless (i think).
 
I have had a look inside a psp, and think we can replace the motherboard. So if we go ahead, it just means buying a scrap psp form ebay for aound £20 and
our new board, the psp uses the sony memory stick, so we might be able to use that too (insted of the sd).
 
Its by no means perfect, but its cheap, and it will work, and be up and running very quickly.

I'm pretty sure you are right about the UMD drive being useless in this instance. It's Sony's proprietary format and I'm not aware of anyway it would be useful in ths instance. They take up a significant amount of space and besides, if the UMD drives actually work they could be resold on eBay.

[mitchd61]

Lol i just thought, the space the udm drive takes up, you could fit a ipod hard disk in there........ 40 gig amiga portable anyone..... :roflmao:
 
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Hitachi-1-8-iPod-Video-60GB-HDD-Hard-Disk-ZIF-Connect_W0QQitemZ110474122518QQcmdZViewItemQQptZOther_MP3_Player_Accessories?hash=item19b8c55516#ht_500wt_990

From what I've seen, it would probably fit. I've seen several PSPs where the UMD was removed, and a few modders who have claimed to fit a similar HD in it's place.

[mitchd61]

Well for one at the moment the largest sd card is what 64GB?? The largest 1.8" hd is 250gb? as the sd card gets bigger so do the hard disks....
More importantly the data thru put is much better on a harddisk, udma mode 100MB/s vs 45MB/s on a x300 sdhc card.
 
It wasn't ment to be serious anyway..... :roflmao:

I figured that much, but it does go to show how much room there is inside one of those cases. Comparatively speaking anyway. Any chance of fitting a Dreamcast in there too!?:lol:

[mitchd61]

This is a project, it won't be for everyone, you will need some skill to assemble it, if you can change a screen in a psp, the you will be able to fit a new board, but it will be fun, and thats what life is about.
 
Its also not all about the minimig, thats only part of it, because its a large fpga, a lot of other computers/video games machines can be implemented.

I for one don't mind a "some assembly required" type of project. That's part of the fun of this sort of thing. When you mention other computers/video games being implemented, what are some you have had in mind? It's an obscure machine, but a portable Atari Jaguar would be pretty unique and Sega CD as well.

[mitchd61]

I have a GP2X running the latest version UAE4all and its actually very good, many games are almost 100% with the right settings @ 240-280Mhz, some fussy games are less smooth. Amiga/16bit generation in a handheld is extra fun over emulation on a PC.

How happy are you with the GP2X overall? I've been contemplating buying one. Mostly for the Amiga emulation, but a few other systems interest me as well. UAE on the PSP just doesn't seem to be smooth enough on a lot of the games, despite some tweeking of the settings.