Pre-assembled Minimigs - Cmonnnnn!

[amigakid]

I for one plan on ordering one and assembling it myself.  I dont have a lot of time and it'll take a while due to that, but I am a very experienced solderer on both through hole and surface mount, but it is still a tedious task and time consuming.  I think it will be a fun project but to think someone could make money doing it, time and cost would not be worth it unlee\ss they sold them for a high cost

[little]

I have a better idea, whoever owns the copyright to this book can sue ALL C programmers for "infringement of copyright since coding C is effectively an unofficial translation of this book from English to a said computer language".

[Kronos]

@little

The Mac-clones came during the early PPC-days, the only 68k-clones I'm aware of would be things like Emplant or Shapeshifter :-o

What has the abilty to run another OS has to do with the question wether Kickstart is an OS or an BIOS ??

You know, one could start linux from Workbench (thats how I did it when I tried 68k-linux for the only time).

Kickstart is the AmigaOS, just not all of it.

Exec, Intuition,GFX and DOS are in ROM, and even started before anything is loaded from disk (hint: the basic shell/cli that appears after booting an empty disk is NOT part of the boot-block).



Oh, and that book was written years after Kernie&Ritchie developed and documented C, so what every you were trying to argue here, you failed
 :-D

[little]

The Mac-clones came during the early PPC-days, the only 68k-clones I'm aware of would be things like Emplant or Shapeshifter

No doubt this macintosh clones are a figment of my imagination :-o Some mac clones no doubt could be upgraded to PowerPC just like the amiga, but that does not mean the mac clones made their appearence at the time the PPC macs made their debut.

What has the abilty to run another OS has to do with the question wether Kickstart is an OS or an BIOS ??

You do not need Windows (or other operative system) to run linux, beos, aros, etc. only the bios of the machine.

You know, one could start linux from Workbench (thats how I did it when I tried 68k-linux for the only time).

Nowadays you may use tools like vmware, qemu, etc. to run another one operative system inside another, but that does not change the fact that operative systems are created to run atop of one bios (be it phoenix, open firmware, efi, linux bios, etc.)

Exec, Intuition,GFX and DOS are in ROM, and even started before anything is loaded from disk

You may place parts of an operative system within the bios, heck linuxbios includes the whole kernel, kickstart 3 has fonts for crying out loud. But that does not change the fact that the bios is the "basical input output system".

Oh, and that book was written years after Kernie&Ritchie developed and documented C

Are you trying to imply that the "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual Third Edition 1991" was written before the amiga made it's debut in 1985? holy time continium distortions batman :-o

or that Kernie&Ritchie should sue all C programmers :-?

[hardlink]

amigakid wrote:
... I am a very experienced solderer on both through hole and surface mount, ...

What is your technique for surface mount soldering? One pin at a time or do you have an oven? One time a tool slipped and I broke some SMT pins on my then-$1000 Warp Engine accelerator. A technician friend at work fixed it for me using a video microscope and some type of solder paste that melted and adhered to the pins when blasted with a heat gun. None of that equipment is usually found at home.

There used to be a conductive epoxy that was used in place of solder by some hobbyists, but the danger of shorting pins would be high.

[Hattig]

Hmm, if you can find 10 people willing to put up $1000 / £500, then I think you will be able to make an order for 100 MiniMigs, fully assembled with parts, with a per-board cost of around $100.

If each board after that was sold for $150, including delivery and packaging and an SD card with a default environment (BTTR games, etc), then you could see a 20-30% return on the investment - which is fair enough for the people risking the money.

I don't see a single person risking $10k of their money. I also think that selling 100 MiniMigs isn't an impossible task. Turn it into a niche demo machine (writing demos in verilog + 68k) and you could shift a thousand into the scene, but that's a bigger risk.

Legally the MiniMig should be fine, hardware wise (even with the Amiga custom chip reimplementation), but getting AROS for MiniMig is quite important in my opinion for those people who want to use it as a computer. AInc will never license AmigaOS for MiniMig, and will most likely prevent Cloanto from offering it as well.

[Kronos]

So there were (inofficial) 68k-Mac-clones ... so what ? Apple wasn't "killing" them, it was the PPC-cloes (UMAX for example) they killed back then.

Sure you don't need Windows to run Linux, but what has that to do with the price of the fish ?? Kickstart is AmigaOS, all you need to start basic apps (as long as they don't need libs found on the WB disks), and thats what defines an OS.

Try starting an MS-DOS-EXE directly from BIOS and you'll see the difference.

To put is simple, there is NO BIOS in Amigas, just as there was no BIOS in the C64 (here it was the BASIC-interpreter acting as OS/bootloader), that does offcourse not mean that one can't use Kickstart as some sort of BIOS.

And your book-example was just even more insane then the one about the hardware-reference.

[tonyyeb]

Instead of debating BIOS' and OS' etc... What do we need to get this up and going?

Well from what I can see is:

1. We need a firm price from a manufacturer (someone in another thread has asked a place in China and is awaiting costs) for say 200-300 instead of people guessing costs.

2. Once cost is established check for demand. A quick post on the front page of Amiga.org should get this done.

3. After a month of checking for interest - if there is enough people then I would suggest a pay first system. This would have to be hosted by someone trusted by the community and using a safe payment system (paypal?). Maybe an Amiga website owner could be asked to look after the money? Then when the target is met the order is placed. If the target is not met then people get refunds (minus the paypal fees! :madashell: )

What do people think of this idea? Have I missed any area that may cause concern? I would guess the items would be sold with no warranty - like buying from a car boot - or ebay.

[little]

I think that whoever has the means to do this feat will think about this and decide whatever means he dims more adequate to acomplish it. We can give our opinion, make suggestions, but at the end of the day it is his/their money on the line.

One thing I can add, I think that whoever is the first to deliver a "finished product" and by that I mean a fully populated minimig, a case, a 5v power supply, a joystick and a MMC card with either a kickstart or AROS kickstart replacement and some games will have the oportunity to sell them beyond the community, articles at techie and game sites will make aware former amiga users of the chance to re-experience the amiga without the hassle of buying old hardware that can no longer work with modern equipment or the hassle of configuring emulator and obtaining roms for it. A "plug and play" package will no doubt give new life to the community and who know, with the extra sales and extra disk storage we might see some new games make its way specially if we get ECS/AGA in the months to come.

It would be nice if before that there could be a minimig 1.2 design with DDR ram (16mb I think is the minimum sized chip one can get) and maybe a RTC.

[Crom00]

Guys,

I've been through all the scenarios described in this thread. At this point the only thing hold me back is the lack of a BOM. I mean a complete Bill of Materials with part listing right down to capacitors and resistors listed.

No one will give us accurate costs without that.
If anyone has a list send it to me, I will forward to factory and we can move forward.

The whole reason for me contacting factoires in China is their experience with this kind of product, and speed.

I may just ask the factory to go ahead and spec out the parts as they see fit based on the data on Dennis' site to move things along.

[skurk]

TheMagicM wrote:
what??? when did this happen?  does that mean the original 10 or so that were going to be developed has been cancelled?

It happened right about here.  The unpopulated PCB's are still available, though.

Since I solder like a drunken monkey, that leaves me empty handed for now.

[TheMagicM]

lol.. thanks for the heads up..


very disappointing to say the least.  

(of course I used a slew of obscene words and gestures to show my displeasure of this news item.. I just cleaned it up in that sentence.)

[Belial6]

Have you tried contacting Dennis directly for the BOM?

[koaftder]

Get over it folks, learn how to solder.  :roll:

[Crom00]

Belial6 wrote:
Have you tried contacting Dennis directly for the BOM?

Yes, yesterday and I can imagine he's quite busy from reading his posts.

There is a Holiday in China this week so they're all off giving them some time to digest all the data I sent, and us some time to assemble a BOM.

I'm going to have to send them my Cloanto Amiga forever CD so they can get up to speed with Amiga, being they're gonna be the first to actually build anything in years.
 :lol:

[TheMagicM]

interesting tutorial.

http://www.infidigm.net/articles/solder/