Why the interest in the MiniMIG?

[Homer]

Steril707: We have been waiting years for new hardware, and have seen countless hardware announced, then fail to make it to market.
At last we have some hardware that you can actually buy, hold in your hand, and even use !

We know its not the up to date market leader that we wished for in 1999.

Just google for things like: Amiga Walker, Amiga Boxer and what was that pci card Amiga  :lol:

This one is here, and it works.

OK everyone, PARTY !!!!!!!!!  :pint: :banana: :pint: :banana:

Well done Dennis, you've made a lot of people very happy  :-D

[amiga_3k]

Oh, and I forgot... just imagine what COULD happen IF, say, Dave Haynie got one of these and started to play with it :-)

[freqmax]

Dave Haynie got one of these and started to play with it :-)

Well just send him one ;-)

I think the primary reason for Minimig is hardware decay. The number of working Amigas are finite. And they will become fewer by the day.
Imagine trying to replicate an Amiga without a working one to compare & test with..

[Fixer]

It's an Amiga reimplementation which can take cheapo Flash Card and PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse.

Also switch between 15/31Khz VGA output so you can use any old CRT monitor you have stored away or even those Amiga monitors (1084 etc.)!

No annoying floppy loading either. Though until HDD emulation on the Flash is sorted you will still have to do virtual disk swap.

[amigadave]

The great interest in the MiniMIG has several points:

1.  Its small form factor opens new options for perhaps an Amiga compatible device in a joystick sized device.

2.  As such devices are developed and produced in larger quantities, it may spark more interest from non-Amiga users that buy one to look backward and learn more about the Amiga history and the fanatic following that still exists after so many years beyond the Amigas supposed death.  This may lead to a small increase in new Amiga enthusiasts.

3.  More importantly, as others have stated, this project is just a beginning point for others to build on and branch off in as yet unknown directions.  It is Open Source and could take off in the right hands.  Don't laugh or discount this idea, nostalgia is very big right now and the buying power of middle age people everywhere is huge.  Also the beginning point that Dennis has given us may lead to the REAL NG Amiga that most of us on these forums have been waiting for.

I am an optimist and don't think that the above is unrealistic.

[amigadave]

amiga_3k wrote:
Oh, and I forgot... just imagine what COULD happen IF, say, Dave Haynie got one of these and started to play with it :-)

I would expect Dave to enjoy playing with it, but unless he has a strong interest in Verilog code projects and has nothing better to occupy his time, I would expect more results from others that are actively working on such coding with FGPGAs.

This is in no way a slight against Dave Haynie, I just don't see him working on a MiniMIG size project.

[KThunder]

to me minimig is a symbol of sorts. like AROS, morphos, uae, pci stuff, usb stuff and numerous others we the amiga fans have kept our computer alive for years.
while the company has done practically nothing for us  we have kept going. the company could have dont this years ago, they could have made one with aga, rtg and ahi audio. but they are to interested in... actually i dont know what they are interested in.

but our amigas are dying. we like hardware, as fun as emulators are we like our miggies. but bad capacitors, dying psus and oxidation are taking them one at a time. plus those that are killed :madashell:

in one form or another amiga is a survivor

[downix]

KThunder wrote:
to me minimig is a symbol of sorts. like AROS, morphos, uae, pci stuff, usb stuff and numerous others we the amiga fans have kept our computer alive for years.
while the company has done practically nothing for us  we have kept going. the company could have dont this years ago, they could have made one with aga, rtg and ahi audio. but they are to interested in... actually i dont know what they are interested in.

but our amigas are dying. we like hardware, as fun as emulators are we like our miggies. but bad capacitors, dying psus and oxidation are taking them one at a time. plus those that are killed :madashell:

in one form or another amiga is a survivor

Amen!  This community is bigger and better than any of the companies that have carried the Amiga name, Commodore included.

If nothing else, the MiniMig has reawaken the love I have for this machine.  And for hardware tinkering in general.

[persia]

I like the idea of new Amigas getting built though... :-)

And that's just it, a new Amiga would be built with new hardware, barcelona cpu, a few gigs of Ram, a terrabyte hard drive, optional blue ray/HD drive (stand DVD burner).  A new Amiga is not going to be anything like an old Amiga.  The last thing I want in a real computer is a floppy drive and a serial port.

Essentially a 21st Century Amiga using 21st Century Technology.

Think of Minimig as a 20th Century Amiga using 21st Century Technology.

[Steril707]

Don't discout the serial port, it's really still important these days for hardware tinkerers like myself. Loading up stuff into Microcontrollers for instance, or all kind of cartridge flashloaders still use serial connections.

It's a shame these ports get more and more omitted on modern hardware designs, although so many people still use them on a daily basis. :angry:

[alexh]

Plaz wrote:
Using your perspective of "hardware emulation" we could say that the first A1000 was simply a hardware emulation of this....Lorraine.

No we couldnt.

Plaz wrote:
The chipset inside the A1000 was just a hardware emulation of the original prototype that used TTL, eproms and wirewrap.

No it isnt. The logic which was inside the A1000 OCS chips was identical (albeit with bug fixes, enhancements etc.) with that of the lorraine. The same schematics were probably used for both. After all the same people created both. MiniMig, the logic will be different. It is a re-interpretation.

Plaz wrote:
I would concider the minimig's FPGA a logical technilogical progression to the outdated chipset in an A500 as the OCS chipset was to the proto boards of the Lorraine.

Not true, the MiniMig is a re-interpretation of the OCS chipset based on the HRM and some inspired guess work.

Imagine it like the translation of a book. The Lorraine and A1000 chips were written in the same language (Schematics), by the same authors at approximately the same time and copied almost 1:1.

Minimig was translated from ENGLISH (HRM) to VERILOG by a different author, some 25 years later, some parts of the ENGLISH were vague and open to interpretation, there is going to be translation errors, not to mention parts which do not have any direct translation and the author has to normalise the process.

[Waccoon]

Emulation means to emulate -- to try to be as close to another entity as possible.  MiniMig definitely places in that category.  By this definition, however, just resynthesizing a chip core would count as making a new machine that emulates the previous version.  People no longer make process masks by hand, like they did in the 80's.  Read "On the Edge" if you want to know what it means to make real hardware.  ;-)

Whether emulation is really an issue or not depends on how compatible you need the thing to be.  Obviously, it will never perfectly emulate all of the undocumented/screwball features of OCS, so, as with WinUAE, MiniMig will never properly run ALL Amiga software in existence.

My interest in the Amiga is mostly with the OS and design philosophy, so I have no interest in owning a MiniMig, and I also have a hard time understanding why people would want it other than sheer novelty value.  However, there's no denying that it's a wonderful piece of engineering.

[freqmax]

Amiga OS could be useful as a handheld. Or in embedded context. After all there's plenty of software. And it doesn't need MMU.

[coldfish]

Why the interest in the MiniMIG?

It is cool, but still just an A500-ish spec' machine, if you get a kick out of this kind of thing, Minimig will no doubt appeal to some degree.

Personally, Id prefer something a bit more powerful as a hobby box.

I think Minimig is something for the remaining Amiga hardware enthusiasts to cling to, beyond that, it isnt going to reach a much wider audience due to expense, low performance and difficulty of setup.  Anyone wanting to play Amiga games will probably use UAE and anyone wanting to play with FPGAs will use any one of the cheap, powerful and well supported off-the-shelf solutions.

It is still cool though, in a niche-y/geeky kind of way.  Amiga nuts with a penchant for build-yer-own, where the journey is the fun will love it.

[Steril707]

Is anybody here knowledgable in the field of FPGAs?

I wonder how Dennis was able to rebuilt the functionality of the Amigas' custom chips. Is there any official documentation existing  about Paula, Denise etc?

I guess i don't know enough about Emulation at all yet, but i think this whole Hardwarehomebrew thing is quite interesting, and i would to get into that a little bit.

So, whats a good starting point...?  :-)

[Rob]

Minimig has lower power requirements compared to a Commodore Amiga or PC emulation.

Power consumption is something that is important in todays world, and something that I think most have not even considered about Minimig.