Laptop

[Bug_racer]

Can anyone work out a price (if possible) to make an old Amiga 500 into a laptop ? I'd love to have one to play all my Classic amiga games while on the moove !!

[Hyperspeed]

Ten Million Pesos!

[amigadave]

Wouldn't it be more practical to use the A600 or CD32 motherboard for such a project, as they are smaller than the A500's mb?

Someone figure it out and provide a parts list and directions to accomplish it and I will give it a try.

[odin]

Cheapest x86 laptop you can find + Amiga Forever = cheap Amiga laptop.

[zyphoid]

it would be more practical to use the cd32 for a laptop over the 500 for 1) size 2) cd32 has the right chip set, and design 3) speed and 4) it was one of the last products of the old commodore era.  I estimate $3k on a do it yourself.  someone actually did a laptop off a 600 motherboard. crude looking though! do a search on amiga laptops a link should come up somewhere.  A viable concept for nostalgia if it wee to be produced...I'd get one!   or just use emulation on a windoze  blaaaa!

[amiga_3k]

Sit on the money for just a little longer and get a Minimig mainboard and some old Dell/Compaq/ Laptop for a few cents. Then normally I guess all that's left to make it a working combo is soldering some adapter cables to get signals on/from the right pins.

Why Minimig mainboard?
- A500 compatible
- New
- Due to FPGA big potential for other projects as well
- Low power consumption
- Has a scan-doubled VGA output
- Has PS/2 connectors for keyboard

Why an old PC laptop?
- Shouldn't cost a limb and an arm
- Should have the right connections (or atleast connections that could easily be adapted)
- Gives a good reason for printing a nice little sticker to be stuck on the case: "What's an Minimig doing inside a Satelite? A lot more than the PC-board ever did!' ;-)

Cost wise? All depends on the final price of Minimig and the price you pay for the laptop.

[Hyperspeed]

Emulating an Amiga on an X86 laptop removes the fun and possible learning/innovation from building your very own pure Amiga hardware.

I think a CD32 motherboard coupled with an SX32-Pro would make a great Amiga laptop.

There was a case design available once called 'PAWS' for A1200 and A4000 but it was way too big. To make it truly portable some research into battery life would be a good start.

[pault1]

Someone put an A1200 into a Commodore SX64 case, used the original color monitor too.  It was a CLEAN job, very nice, it was at AmiWest a couple of years ago.  Not exactly a laptop but quite portable.

Paul T

[Hyperspeed]

What's one of them!?

:-D

[Tomas]

Bug_racer wrote:
Can anyone work out a price (if possible) to make an old Amiga 500 into a laptop ? I'd love to have one to play all my Classic amiga games while on the moove !!

Would not a a600 be better suited for this task? And it all depends on your skills and how picky you are about the looks.

[Tomas]

odin wrote:
Cheapest x86 laptop you can find + Amiga Forever = cheap Amiga laptop.

There is still not a single software emulator that can emulate it properly.

[amiga_3k]

Tomas wrote:
[
There is still not a single software emulator that can emulate it properly.

Thanks Thomas for stating just that :-) I felt like I'm the only one with that idea of emulation just doesn't cut it, no matter how many gigahurts are used to do so.

[odin]

But ofcourse! Minimig stuck inside an old laptop sounds like a brilliant plan.

[alexh]

Hyperspeed wrote:
I think a CD32 motherboard coupled with an SX32-Pro would make a great Amiga laptop.

If you had seen the size (or rather depth) of the combined SX32-Pro & CD32 motherboard you wouldnt say that.

[Hyperspeed]

by alexh:
If you had seen the size (or rather depth) of the combined SX32-Pro & CD32 motherboard you wouldnt say that.

Well they both fit inside the CD32 which is itself only 2" thick. So if the CD32 motherboard and SX32-Pro are 1¾" thick then that's not much thicker than an A600 mobo with Apollo 630.

I'm just wondering if an A600 keyboard could somehow be rigged to another type of Amiga... standard Amiga keyboards are too long.

A portable ECS machine even with an '030 is not as exciting as an AGA machine with maybe an '060/PPC in it.

Due to miniaturisation I think it's only fair to expect a homebrew Amiga to be a bit bigger than your average laptop but it has to be less than the 'luggable' PAWS solutions that were around back in '98.