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

[whiteb]

Okay, so what we are talking about here, for all those that are interested, will be a FULLY POPPED board, but without a case ? and controller, meaning without any Joysticks and stuff.

Just the board, with all the components.

Batteries not included

[edit] and for those waiting for parts and stuff from the UK, during the Postal industrial action.... (Myself included)./

British high court has *JUST* ruled any more strikes are *OUTLAWED*.

[Tomas]

@Crom00
So what do i have to do to it to get it fully working? Is the only thing needed to send over a rom image and then you are pretty much good to go? If so, then what is the process really? sd card wtih rom image? needing to burn/program a chip manually or what?

Thanks in advance.

[Crom00]

The FPGA and legallly obtianed kickstart ROM are loaded at startup from an MMC card.

Instructions for how it all works are at Dennis' site. He also recently complied the soruce code to make it easier for us. He also has a Mini-MIG manual there to check out.

For this initial run of 10 we would supply a fully functional populated board sans power supply or MMC.

Examining what we else can include for a larger run, waiting to hear back from all vendors.

[whiteb]

Tomas wrote:
@Crom00
So what do i have to do to it to get it fully working? Is the only thing needed to send over a rom image and then you are pretty much good to go? If so, then what is the process really? sd card wtih rom image? needing to burn/program a chip manually or what?

Thanks in advance.

SD-Card will need a MINIMUM of 2 files, kick.rom (ummm, i wonder what this is), and minimig1.bin (The FPGA Core).
On the card, you can put whatever you want on it in adf format.  Bearing in mind that the SD Card file system is Fat-16, where the filenames are a MAXIMUM of 8.3 (Who remembers DOS ?)

What crom is saying, is you will get a fully popped board, just add a 5V powerpack, and the loaded SD Card and away you go.

You will need (at this stage) to supply your own PS2 Keyboard and mice, and/or Joysticks.

From what I understand, the necessary chips on the board will be Pre-programmed (Pic).  

What happens is thus..., you power on the minimig, Pic reads the MMC, loads the Core into FPGA, Resets itself, Core loads Kick.rom from MMC, and resets and Boots into Kickstart.

Now, it is up to the individual to Source the Kick.rom themselves, either from an operation Amiga, or via commercial avenues, like Amiga Forever which has copies of kickstart.

[little]

filenames are a MAXIMUM of 8.3 (Who remembers DOS ?)

FAT 16 has support for up to 255 characters filenames with LFN :rtfm:. What I would like to know is if the PIC program has LFN support :-?

[Darrin]

PM sent.  Let's get this ball rolling.   :-)

[whiteb]

little wrote:

filenames are a MAXIMUM of 8.3 (Who remembers DOS ?)

FAT 16 has support for up to 255 characters filenames with LFN :rtfm:. What I would like to know is if the PIC program has LFN support :-?

Check the source out then ?  

http://home.hetnet.nl/~weeren001/downloads/minimig1_firmware_15_07_2007.zip

[little]

struct file2TYPE  {     unsigned char name[12];            /*name of file*/ ...

It seems to me there is no LFN support :shrug:

[tonyyeb]

Who cares if it has LFN or not? Oh the hardship of renaming your adf files to 8.3 format!

[Crom00]

If this develops further will let you guys know more details and make a formal announcement. Still weeks away from that, just getting costs back.

[little]

Drifting for a moment into presumtion (dream)land, if (next year) there is a mass production of minimigs 2.0 and if it includes an interface that allows connection to the internet (rj-45, 802.11b or usb) would it be fast enough to surf the net? I read the other day about the Icab 2.9.9b web browser for the 68k macintosh and maybe they could get interested in porting it to amigaos 3.1? It needs 4.5 mb of RAM, so a minimig with 8 mb ram would be required.

[freqmax]

That requirement translates into using DRAM (3.3V-EDO, SDRAM, DDR1, DDR2).

[tonyyeb]

Any news on these?

Thanks

[Crom00]

Nope. Our PCB's got hung up due to the postal strike in the UK. Difficult to move forward without a working unit. The only other populated PCB units in existance made by other parties are being sold to the highest bidders on ebay.

Working around this.

[XDelusion]

 I just hope the workers are paid well, and lets hope they don't have a baby, GASP!

 Dealing with the new world order is kinda sketchy if you ask me. What sort of conditions will these workers be working in I wonder.

[Crom00]

Working to get another PCB vendor so we can resume work on this at full speed. The electronics factories are fine been over there, not like the media tries to portray. Good hard workers, clean facilities.