Contaced a Factory in China about producing a run of fully populated Mini-migs

[ChrisH]

@Crom00
If you want to avoid wasting a LOT of money, with only a load of NON-working MiniMigs to show for it, then I think you need to be REALLY careful:

You need to double-check EVERY piece of info that you give to the manufacturer, because one wrong bit will mean nothing will work.  More specifically, I think that you need the help of someone who has already built a working MiniMig themselves, and use the BOM that they used.  Or else make your own BOM, but then get someone to use that to make one MiniMig first (as a test).

Even if you do that, you still need to provide an IDIOT-PROOF means of testing whether the boards are working, or else you may get a nasty surprise when you receive them.  You have to remember that the factory guys will have *zero* idea what the MiniMig is (or what it is supposed to do), and probably they won't care either (beyond a step-by-step list of instructions).

And even if you do all that, *if* you haven't dealt with these sorts of manufacturers before, then I'd rate your chances of getting some working MiniMigs as being pretty low.  :-(  But I wish you good luck - you're going to need it!

[Crom00]

ChrisH wrote:
@Crom00
If you want to avoid wasting a LOT of money, with only a load of NON-working MiniMigs to show for it, then I think you need to be REALLY careful:

Won't go into details about proccess but we have worked with electronics before and had some nightmares as well. We're experienced in dealing with factories in Asia and have dealt with more "worst case scenarios" then we had any right to bear.

Well...It builds character is all I have to say.

Rushing things to market and cost reductions create problems. There is no pressure to meet a mass market deadline and pricepoint for insretion into a Target or Wal-Mart, BestBUy planogram so there is debug time.

We have a good "advocate" or liason working on our behalf to insure this won't happen.

Thanks for the heads up, we've been there. Keep the comments coming.

Once things get rolling I would gladly refer to the expertise of this community in testing boards.

Paramount goal is developing a list of working titles.

[alexh]

asian1 wrote:
"eASIC [snip] a maskless customization approach aimed at eliminating NRE [snip]

What they dont tell you is the average price per user gate. I bet it is better than FPGA but 10x higher than ASIC.

Still an interesting alternative to FPGA / CPLD for low to medium volume (more than 10k and less than 100k units).

[whiteb]

Crom00: Just make sure they understand the Pic's have to be programmed before being mounted on the PCB

[koaftder]

whiteb wrote:
Crom00: Just make sure they understand the Pic's have to be programmed before being mounted on the PCB

No need for that, on Dennis' board, he used a dip socket. Production minimigs should have the pic in a socket so people can update replace it. From looking at the pcb, i don't see an icsp header, so the socket will be necessary.

[JimS]

Crom00 wrote:
Once things get rolling I would gladly refer to the expertise of this community in testing boards.

Back when Commodore was still around, they had a "systest" or burn in disk for repair centers. I might still have a .dms copy around somewhere. I don't know if it would run on the minimig... but it might be interesting to try.

Edit: Found the file- it was ADF, not .dms... but it runs under UAE, although the _blit and RTC tests fail. That could be my UAE setup.

[Crom00]

JimS wrote:

Back when Commodore was still around, they has a "systest" or burn in disk for repair centers. I might still have a .dms copy around somewhere.

I kinda left the Amiga scene in 2001 and burned everything I had to DVD, checked the DVD and although I have WB disks, and HD setup disks (even a A1000 sidecar disks) no burn in disks...

There's a fellow selling one on ebay... of course it's $99...

[little]

At the very least the next feature added should be UAE hard file support.

I do not know if it is posible with minimig 1.1, but it is a two in one feature:

1. Ability to read from UAE hard files
2. Ability to write to floppies and hard files.

Also, since it seems it is getting harder to obtain the small (in capacity) RAM chips, could someone please tell me if it feasible to add bigger (in capacity) chips? 4mb should be the minimum IMHO.

[downix]

little wrote:

At the very least the next feature added should be UAE hard file support.

I do not know if it is posible with minimig 1.1, but it is a two in one feature:

1. Ability to read from UAE hard files
2. Ability to write to floppies and hard files.

Also, since it seems it is getting harder to obtain the small (in capacity) RAM chips, could someone please tell me if it feasible to add bigger (in capacity) chips? 4mb should be the minimum IMHO.

In a word, no.  The Amiga's chipset can only address 2MB maximum.

[little]

The Amiga's chipset can only address 2MB maximum.

I was thinking about 512 kb kickstart + 512 kb chip RAM + 3MB Fast RAM or any other combination that gave a total of 4 MB; instead of the actual 512 kb kickstart + 512 kb chip RAM + 1 MB Fast RAM.

[freqmax]

@ChrisH:
When I visited a manufactor working for Ericsson I saw that they had been supplied with a testrig such that every board could be verified to be working.
So maybe there should be a daughterboard just to test the Minimig hardware wise.

@JimS:
Maybe you could send your "systest" disc to Dennis such that we can know if Minimig pass?

@little:
Hardfile and write ability should be possible if there's enough code memory.
2M is needed, 4M cost more. Better to get SDRAM working, which will give 32M :-D

[little]

SDRAM working, which will give 32M

Better, how about 32 mb soldered into the minimig and a socket so you could add a 32 or 64 mb chip? :-D

[freqmax]

Well socket seems nice, but are a EMI liability, require board space, more complications than simple soldering it right on.
And most 16-bit computers didn't make use of that many MB. The left over will likely be used for kickstarts or ram discs etc..
Don't forgett all ideas needs to be put into reality. and then murphys law come into play and you will want to keep things very simple.

[Crom00]

Working 1.1 Board...


Anyone have one of these? I'm willing to buy one to help speed up costing. It's going to take a couple of weeks to get costs back. A working 1.1 board will speed this up.

[JimS]

Crom00 wrote:

I kinda left the Amiga scene in 2001 and burned everything I had to DVD, checked the DVD and although I have WB disks, and HD setup disks (even a A1000 sidecar disks) no burn in disks...

I did much the same thing a few years back, as a safeguard against bitrot on all those old floppies and magazines. Now instead of "the big pile o' disks", I've got the CD full of anonymous ADFs. ;-)  If you think it will help. PM me with an email address, I'll stretch a point and send you a copy.

There's a fellow selling one on ebay... of course it's $99...

Ahh.... I can see it now: "Very Rare! official Commodore Amiga Systest disk" What a ripoff artist.

[Iggy_Drougge]

Crom00 wrote:
I tell you, having an Amiga game player that I can connect to a Modern HDTV with a dvi-vga port at 31 klhz is good enough for me. No more unsghtly flicker fixers.

How many games do you run in interlace?