Minimig after all this time...

[Rooster]

Hey fellas..  Been out for quite some time (for the few that MIGHT remember me) with some real life issues etc..  Kinda dippin' my feet back into the Ami world again and wanted to see what's up with the Minimig..  Everyone (but me) have one yet?  They being sold (in kits or assembled)?  Where can I go to track one down?

Also, OT, but I was reading some threads about a guy who made a new version of the A1000 mobo..  Anyone know if he plans on doing a A2000 mobo? (curious)

[amiga_3k]

Minimig is for sale as a populated motherboard. ACube builds and distributes them. The remaining Amiga dealers seem to stock and sell these beauties :-). Also development of the firmware seems to be rather alive and kicking. Enough threads on Amiga.org about it.

Do I have one? Nope... sadly not. Financial issues.

[Phantom]

@ amiga_3k

Do I have one? Nope... sadly not. Financial issues.

You can sell your "Mainsystem" and buy a bunch of MiniMig's. ;-)

[Everblue]

I would do that, but its nowhere near perfect.

Roll on Clone-A.

[amiga_3k]

Phantom wrote:
@ amiga_3k

Do I have one? Nope... sadly not. Financial issues.

You can sell your "Mainsystem" and buy a bunch of MiniMig's. ;-)

Hehehe... well, the downside is that 'main-system' has been bought from the office (at a price lower than a new Minimig) with the restraint that I have to hold on to it for atleast a year. Sadly, only half of that period has passed :-S.

[Rooster]

Nowhere near perfect?  What sorts of problems are people seeing/experiencing?

Anyone know if any has or is sold the bareboards?  I know there was talk of that before, you know, like a kit..  You buy the bare board, populate it yourself, etc.. (Yes, I can solder SMT here, got a big fancy solder station, heh).  If so, who would I contact about that?

[weirdami]

@Rooster

Nowhere near perfect?

his "Mainsystem" is

[amiga_3k]

weirdami wrote:
@Rooster

Nowhere near perfect?

his "Mainsystem" is

Been talking to my wife?

[HenryCase]

Rooster wrote:
Nowhere near perfect?  What sorts of problems are people seeing/experiencing?

There are some compatibility issues, but there are developers working to iron out the kinks in the system, and once they do it will be easy to upgrade your Minimig for free.

Rooster wrote:
Anyone know if any has or is sold the bareboards?  I know there was talk of that before, you know, like a kit..  You buy the bare board, populate it yourself, etc.. (Yes, I can solder SMT here, got a big fancy solder station, heh).  If so, who would I contact about that?

It was possible to buy bareboards from a company called Nusim Ltd a while back, but I think they may have sold out. As for a kit, you may be in luck, as the amiga.org user amigadave is looking to sell all the parts he collected for building a Minimig. Read his post about it here:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=36603

[Everblue]

Well the Minimig is not perfect because:

1. You cannot save in games that have save options (cannot write to ADF) (although I imagine that this will be eventually fixed)

2. The list of games which do not work/have issues is way too long (see 3.)

3. It is not cycle perfect.

Now, I am no way a techie, but I have been reading that as long as the Minimig is not 'cycle perfect' (whatever that means), its impossible to have everything working.

My next question, in this light would be:

Is it possible to have a cycle perfect Minimig simply through software updates?

[HenryCase]

Everblue wrote:
Is it possible to have a cycle perfect Minimig simply through software updates?

Yes.

The amount of work to achieve this would be fairly substantial, but it is possible. Even without cycle perfection you could still achieve a very high compatibility rate with classic software.

Everblue, perhaps it would help if you understood what cycle perfect means. Think of this as an analogy: if you manufactured coins and then tried flipping these coins (in a controlled experiment) most of the time the coins would land on the same side as each other as they were close in size and weight. However, there are small differences between the coins, so every now and again a coin will land in a different way.

Clone-A is not identical to the Amiga architecture, but it does enough to fool the software into thinking it is. They achieved cycle compatibility through copying the exact timings of the signals between the classic Amiga chips. Minimig developers, given the time and technical resources of the Clone-A team, could do the same. Clearer?

[amigadave]

Rooster wrote:
Nowhere near perfect?  What sorts of problems are people seeing/experiencing?

Anyone know if any has or is sold the bareboards?  I know there was talk of that before, you know, like a kit..  You buy the bare board, populate it yourself, etc.. (Yes, I can solder SMT here, got a big fancy solder station, heh).  If so, who would I contact about that?

I have all the parts to build one Minimig, some extra parts because a few of the components can only be bought in lots of 10 when only 1 or 2 are needed to complete the MiniMig, and I have a second MiniMig pcb.   So........ if you have the time, equipment and obviously more talent than myself at soldering smt components, perhaps we could make some arrangements for you to do some soldering for me in exchange for me providing you with a MiniMig pcb and some of the smaller parts.  If you feel it is not equal in value, then we can work out what the difference is via email.  Contact me at " amigadave@earthlink.net ".

I guess I don't really need two working MiniMigs for myself and I have been hesitant to begin the assembly, though I think I could get it done if I was really patient and careful in following the directions that Dennis and others have provided.

[boing4000]

Everblue wrote:

3. It is not cycle perfect.

Is it possible to have a cycle perfect Minimig simply through software updates?

Even if the minimig will not be "cycle perfect" the internal clocking is controlled by Agnus and all timings are already correct to let many many software (games/demos) work.

The biggest problem (like already mentioned) is the read-only state of the emulated floppy. Programming for write support to adf files is already in progress, also the bugfixing in correct DDFSTRT and DDFSTOP handling.
As soon as this 2 mayor issues are resolved, minimig will me very close to an A500/1000/2000 machine.