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

[whiteb]

Crom00 wrote:
If someone REALLY knows a factory in the US, Tawian, or wherever that they prefer and know that can handle this kind of work, send me the info. I have no problems swithcing factories if it makes sense.

I am sure there are, I know of one or two here in Australia that do it, but the difference being, you will probably pay 10 times the price.

I enquired about getting a run of Minimig PCB's done here in Australia when I was not sure what was happening with my Nusim boards.

The cheapest I could get, was like AU$250 for a run of 10, instead of about $US50 from a chinese run.

You can get things done back in the more civilised countries, it just costs more.  Why do companies send their production to China and india ?, something called "50c a day".

anyway, Crom, quit playing Elfmania

[freqmax]

Within Europe, some local supplier for the discretes. And say Olimex for the pcb. One might get the cost down.

The ONLY reason I started with digikey was due they are a Xilinx FPGA distributor + their parametric search. And they happens to have m68000 aswell.

The tricky components are FPGA & m68000.

Anyone that can optimize the component sourceing will contribute to make more minimigs a reality.

If you have Linux ISE >8.x installed you can try these automatic build files (Makefile):
http://filewebhosting.com/download.php?file=476Minimig1.tar.bz2
(ISE GUI seems to love to crash)

If you do try the minimig verilog compile, please post which cpu type, cpu frequency, memory size, memory type, operating system you used. And how much realtime that was needed.

[Tomas]

@terminator4
Maybe you should also look at the faults of your own country?
USA still tortures people, USA still have death penality, USA still has a huge deal of homeless people, USA invades countries for oil.
USA is also losing more and more freedom in the name of so called terrorism.
I am sure 99% of all x86 pcs has at least some components made in China.

The AmigaONE was a failure simple because of bad choice of chipset. Take for example the via 686b chipset... It had already proven to have alot of bugs on the x86 platforms, but still they choose it? It surely had nothing to do with those who assembled the board.

And who the heck could afford a minimig if it was produced here in the west? It just simply is not possible, unless you do a production run of tens of thousand boards, which is not possible in the amiga world.

[Crom00]

A Chinese Rohs certified factory couldn't possibly do any worse than the hatchet job I would execute if I had to solder all those components... LOL!

[whiteb]

Tomas wrote:
@terminator4
Maybe you should also look at the faults of your own country?
USA still tortures people, USA still have death penality, USA still has a huge deal of homeless people, USA invades countries for oil.
USA is also losing more and more freedom in the name of so called terrorism.
I am sure 99% of all x86 pcs has at least some components made in China.

I know this is off topic, but millions of people in the USA go about their daily life, oblivious to the fact that, there are *STILL* area's of New Orleans that are deserted and uninhabited because of the devastation of Katrina.

Just look at the American Road Trip that Topgear did last year.

[zylesea]

Nothing against China*, but if you're lookong for some alternative with Amiga expertise just try www.dcecom.de. They have the knowledge, the maschines and the experience - at their faclities the GREX, PuP-devices (after P5 went bust), Pegasos I & II, SX-32, Efika, etc. have been produced.
Maybe it's worth contacting them.

*) really not! I have mostly good experiences with Chinese products (well, there's also crap between, but there's also crap made elsewhere of course) and ppl.

[Crom00]

Getting closer here, vendor had truoble securing all parts this is supposedly resolved. WE shall see.

By the way. Have a 2.4 gig amiga sofware collection and I ran Deluxe Paint 3 on the Minimig, worked quite nicely, only thing no way to save my work...LOL! Did a 60 second 320X400 64 color anim.

I thought the OCS used the non Extra Half Brite denise?

[whiteb]

Crom00 wrote:
Getting closer here, vendor had truoble securing all parts this is supposedly resolved. WE shall see.

By the way. Have a 2.4 gig amiga sofware collection and I ran Deluxe Paint 3 on the Minimig, worked quite nicely, only thing no way to save my work...LOL! Did a 60 second 320X400 64 color anim.

I thought the OCS used the non Extra Half Brite denise?

Why couldn't you save off ?, surely you can save off to where you loaded Dpaint from ?  It should show up as a normal drive ?

[freqmax]

There is no write function in the PIC18 firmware whatsoever. I read it..

[Crom00]

freqmax wrote:
There is no write function in the PIC18 firmware whatsoever. I read it..

Games like Cinemawares Basektball have issues since a save disk is required and the disc is write protected.

Other notes about the MiniM.

Uses Sega Genesis controllers quite well like an Amiga.

Using an off the shelf optical mouse and keyboard beats the Old school ball mouse anyday.

Some sprite issues in games like Lionheart.

Looks better on 4:3 VGA than  16:9 widescreen 22" monitor due to the stretched pixels. All games work without issues except where noted.

Games I have tested:
Pinball Fanstasis
Moonstone
Turrican
Flashback
Anotherworld
Super Methane Bros
Elfmania
Body Blows
Zeeowolf
Awesome
Lemmings
ProjectX
Startdust (main ship doesn't show. sprite error)
Lionheart (main character doesn't show, sprite error)
Super Frog (main character doesn't show, sprite error)
R-Type2
Deluxe Paint 3
Barbarian 2
Shadow of the Beast
Shadow of the Beast 3 (main character doesn't show, sprite error)
Ruff & Tumbe (stops at loading screen)
Golden Axe
Battle Squadron

and more I can't remember right now...

Biggest upset was Ruff & Tumble as that's a great game to demo the MiniM.

[Piru]

I thought the OCS used the non Extra Half Brite denise?

Only the very first US A1000's lacked EHB.

[tonyyeb]

Crom00 wrote:
Getting closer here, vendor had truoble securing all parts this is supposedly resolved. WE shall see.

Got any dates/schedule available yet?

[Crom00]

Whether or not they can secure parts and come back with reasonable terms dictates everything at this point. Thanks to all those that have listed suppliers and helped out like WhiteB.

Until then I'm testing the MiniM and have a love hate relationship with it. I put it away becuase I spend too much time tinkering with it, then take it out to show folks who stop by, then pack it up again.

If all goes well in a short while some of you will develop the same problem LOL!

[Darrin]

Crom00 wrote:

Games like Cinemawares Basektball have issues since a save disk is required and the disc is write protected.

Other notes about the MiniM.

Uses Sega Genesis controllers quite well like an Amiga.

Using an off the shelf optical mouse and keyboard beats the Old school ball mouse anyday.

Some sprite issues in games like Lionheart.

Looks better on 4:3 VGA than  16:9 widescreen 22" monitor due to the stretched pixels. All games work without issues except where noted.

Thanks for that list and bug report.

I'm sure that the people with assembles Minimigs and the ability are already working on the ability to save data (and hopfully a hard drive file and possibly multiple floppy support).

Do you have "Menace"?  I loved that sidesways scroller and the music was great.  Please test it if you have it and let me know if it works.  Would "Xenon 2 - Megablast" work on OCS?

[Darrin]

Crom00 wrote:If all goes well in a short while some of you will develop the same problem LOL!

Hopefully in time for Xmas.   :-D

[amigadave]

Tomas wrote:
@terminator4
Maybe you should also look at the faults of your own country?
USA still tortures people, USA still have death penality, USA still has a huge deal of homeless people, USA invades countries for oil.
USA is also losing more and more freedom in the name of so called terrorism.
I am sure 99% of all x86 pcs has at least some components made in China.

The AmigaONE was a failure simple because of bad choice of chipset. Take for example the via 686b chipset... It had already proven to have alot of bugs on the x86 platforms, but still they choose it? It surely had nothing to do with those who assembled the board.

And who the heck could afford a minimig if it was produced here in the west? It just simply is not possible, unless you do a production run of tens of thousand boards, which is not possible in the amiga world.

I had to look back a page to see what prompted this attack on the USA by Thomas.  I am glad I did not complete my first attempt at a rebuttal to his post above before reading terminator4's messages (which I don't agree with, except for a few points, but I don't think that political crap belongs in this thread).  People in the USA are not all like terminator4, or George Bush.  It saddens me to see that so many other people from other countries dislike US citizens now, and think we are all like George Bush, or that we approve of the way in which the war in Iraq was started.

I could write much more in defense of the majority of US citizens, but this is not the time or place for such a long rebuttal.