The Minimig is back, now with the ARM controller!

[bloodline]

The drives are not standard.

But the variations are probably controller dependant.

Amiga floppy drives spin at half the rate of a PC floppy drive when a HD disk is inserted because Paula cannot accept the data above DD rate.

There is something about the _DC & _RDY lines (missing on most PC drives) and DS0 & DS1 being swapped too.

Hmmm... Have to disagree here: http://pinouts.ru/Storage/InternalDisk_pinout.shtml

The connector is standard on the PC side of things, I think it would be quite simple to write a floppy controller using an ATMega328 (arduino), that could encapsulate the drive signals in simple packets sent over a standard UART... That could be used to read an write any floppy disk, including Amiga disks... Obviously one would have to control the drive and do the MFM encoding all in software... But that's how it was done on the Amiga anyway

[Mrs Beanbag]

What CPU is it, just a plain 68000? And chipset still ECS?

[alexh]

What CPU is it, just a plain 68000? And chipset still ECS?

Yes and Yes. You can overclock the 68000 to 56 MHz from what I've read.

[Hattig]

Yes, Minimig is a really souped up A500+ in reality. Still a nice machine, but it's a few years old now I guess (anyone remember the key Minimig dates - first board, ARM board, 50MHz option, etc)?

[Dwyloc]

From the Acube website:

- emulates four floppy drives
- adds write support to harddrive and floppy disks
- allow increase of the CPU speed from 7.09 to 49.63 MHz with a 4kb zero waitstate cpu cache
- allows usage of long floppy file names
- allows usage of directories on the SD card
- allows unlimited number of files by directory
- support for 2 HDF files
- fast firmware boot

As some one who has two Minimig's a standard 1 with 2MB of RAM and PIC plus an expanded one with 4MB of RAM and ARM addon board the real differences are as follows latest version of the PIC and ARM software.
 
ARM upgraded features
- support for large hard files (100MB is about the largest usable size with the controller PIC)
- much faster hard disk emulation (PIC harddisk emulation is about as fast as an old 80MB as found in A600)
- Better Floppy disk emulation compatibility (use 2x Floppy on PIC for best compatibility).


The way I see it the my 2MB Minimig with PIC is like my A600 with factory fitted 2.5" 60MB hard.

My 4MB Minimig is like an A500 with GVP harddisk and RAM upgrade.

So if you want to play WHDLOAD games get the ARM addon board if not the standard PIC will do fine.

Additional note: ether way get the 4MB model as its far more flexible.

You can enable or disable the extra ram and configure the chipram, other memory split from the config menu then then reboot to have the change take effect which is grate for getting fussy old games and software to run.  Changing kickstart version also works in the same way.

[lumi]

Isn't Chameleon 64 with the latest Minimig core a better option like the Minimig 4MB with arm controller?

[bbond007]

What CPU is it, just a plain 68000? And chipset still ECS?

In turbo mode it pretty much runs 1:1 with an A3000/25mhz speed wise with much faster video speed.... even faster than AGA

[alexh]

Isn't Chameleon 64 with the latest Minimig core a better option like the Minimig 4MB with arm controller?

I'm not 100% familiar with the support for the Chameleon64 but hardware wise it is much better than a MiniMig v1.1 PCB.

[Darrin]

Isn't Chameleon 64 with the latest Minimig core a better option like the Minimig 4MB with arm controller?

Depends.  I have a chameleon64 too, but it uses a softcore CPU.  Also, unless things have changed, you'll need the docking station to use joysticks as it doesn't (didn't) recognise the C64's ports.  You can use the IR CDTV controller which is fun.

If you want maximum A500 compatibility then Minimig is best.

If you want AGA then get the FPGA arcade.

[lumi]

Depends.  I have a chameleon64 too, but it uses a softcore CPU.  Also, unless things have changed, you'll need the docking station to use joysticks as it doesn't (didn't) recognise the C64's ports.  You can use the IR CDTV controller which is fun.

If you want maximum A500 compatibility then Minimig is best.

If you want AGA then get the FPGA arcade.

I am already in waiting list for FPGA arcade, I hope it will be available for all soon. I was just thinking if to buy also Minimig, I hate waiting

[bloodline]

Depends.  I have a chameleon64 too, but it uses a softcore CPU.  Also, unless things have changed, you'll need the docking station to use joysticks as it doesn't (didn't) recognise the C64's ports.  You can use the IR CDTV controller which is fun.

If you want maximum A500 compatibility then Minimig is best.

If you want AGA then get the FPGA arcade.

A quick look at the schematics for MiniMig 1.1 and I can see the video seems to be generated by three 4bit resistor ladder DACs (though their form is not what I'm used to).

This is fine for OCS/ECS, but AGA needs 8bit DACs... Couldn't the three 4bit DACs be replaced with a single 8bit one and simply (de)multiplex the three signals via that?

Perhaps some electronic gurus here could help me here

[Darrin]

Perhaps some electronic gurus here could help me here

That wouldn't be me then.