Minimig PCB run - interest thread

[wildstar1063]

I'd be interested in a populated board, or at least a board with all the SMT stuff populated.

I would also like to see all of the Major IC's socketed

wildstar1063

[whiteb]

Yeah, Xenepp smack a couple of bux on to the cost of each board and put it towards the growing truckload of alcohol deliveries for Dennis (Assuming he likes Alcohol).

Put me down for one fully populated board (DEFINATELY with the Hardware fix added, preferably directly to the Production run, and not just a jumper wire).  I'd like to populate it myself, and solder myself, My SMC skills are shocking, whereas my through Board soldering is okay, and BULK orders of boards and FPGA should reduce costs.

[Oli_hd]

Just checked out some PCB pages to see the cost of manufacturing the board.

He may want to have a look at MYRO as they do the full turn key solution (they get the parts, make the PCB and assemble and the prices they quote are to good to be true.

I was going to check with Gold Phoenix too, but their page is down ATM.

Your gonna need to e-mail them at sales at goldphoenixpcb dot biz

[Fester]

TheMagicM wrote:
i'll pay an extra $20 USD if thats acceptable for my board if it goes directly to Dennis.   He delivered when even a "company" like Amiga Inc. couldnt.  He even beat out that Clone-A machine.

This even beat the One Chip MSX computer that someone mentioned here a while back.

[PeterSieg]

I would also like to apply for one unit. Best is ready to run board or at least all smd parts soldered.. To my knowledge, having the smd part soldered at the pcb factory should also be the least amount of costs.

I prefer all components on a single pcb incl. port adapters etc. Mini-ITX form factor eases the housing in mini-pc cases..

Peter

[Everblue]

I think there should be a proper website so people who are interested fill up a form or something

Any idea about what the price could be?

How will games run? ADF/DMS disks running from a memory card via floppy drive emulation?

[billt]

Another thought if a new motherboard is made. If there's enough available pins on the FPGA (perhaps pick a different FPGA package to add more pins), put on some additional things that may not be in the current MiniMig design but which could be added with time to the Verilog design. An IDE port, ethernet, and perhaps PCI slot as examples. There's a ton of things on opencores which might be combined into MiniMig. Maybe a larger motherboard will be made someday which could have Zorro slots and video slots as well in addition to PCI and maybe PCI-Express with a PCI-?PCI-Express bridge chip), sortof like early Boxer ideas were.

[spihunter]

I'm in for a fully assembled board.

[freqmax]

I have created a Minimig wiki:
http://www.opencircuits.com/Minimig_Project

My hope is that it will help people to accumulate knowledge in this matter such that one doesn't have to read long.. threads to find information.
Especially now that there are several.

No login required, works almost like wikipedia.

[Mikkel]

The problem with the "bigger FPGA" idea is that the 208-pin package is the biggest one with pins from Xilinx IIRC. If you want to go higher, you need to go BGA. And BGA soldering equipment is expensive, you need at least a four layer board, inspection of the soldering requires even more expensive equipment, and for cheaper BGA soldering machines (that still cost several thousand dollars), the failure rate is high.

It would, in other words, get much more expensive.

It's an idea for the future, for those who want to experiment, but for the majority, who just want a very compact and practical OCS A500 to play with, staying with the 208 pin FPGA is the best solution

[Dr_Righteous]

Here's a thought... How using the original design, with headers instead of the ports... Then having different boards to mount it to via screws and ribbons. The different boards would then have ATX and ITX layouts or whatever else. The mainboard would be the same, it's the board it's attached to that varies.

[frodemed]

This is great news and I would really want one. So count me in for at least one fully assembled Minimig maybe two depending on the price .

[mongo]

Switching from the Spartan 3 XC3S400 to a Spartan 3E XC3S500E would give you about 17 extra I/O pins while still keeping the 208 pin package. It would also give you a good bit of space for bug fixes and/or future enhancements. The current Minimig design uses up about 82% of the XC3S400, but only 65% of an XC3S500E.

Personally, I'd like to see a real floppy controller, IDE controller, a Kickstart ROM socket and possibly a Zorro-II slot added to the Minimig.

There is also an open source Atari ST clone. It would be nice if one board could be used for both the Minimig and the ST.

[koaftder]

I'm glad to see that there is a lot of support for Dennis getting some much needed reward and i'm glad to see that there is some progress towards getting a product out. This grassroots stuff really makes it a lot more fun. Count me in for a board, and for whoever is making this possible, please allow us to pay over, or donate a portion so that we can get Dennis fat as a cow on pizza and thoroughly drunk.

[Dr_Righteous]

Baby steps folks. Nevermind the PCI and IDE and all that crap. If future expansion is in our minds, we should focus on Zorro-II and possible RAM/CPU expansions first. Zorro-II being the first priority, as there are many A2K expansions out there (like SCSI interfaces) that would be well within the realm of MiniMigs current specs.

[pedro7]

Please please please make it to some recognised standard size and mounting hole placement.
Mini-itx or nano-itx I don't mind but smaller is better if possible.