Pre-assembled Minimigs - Cmonnnnn!

[TheMagicM]

interesting tutorial.

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

[koaftder]

(Thin) Quad Flat Package - SO.80mm example :

HOLY CRAP! Talk about chip suicide!

Just flux the pads and the tip, get a fresh solder ball on the tip and rake the pads till you have an even coat on the pads and tack the pins down individually.

[Crom00]

To borrow from OJ...

IF I DID IT...

or more like when I do it... we're trying to structure this so that there is NO risk.

 After cost analasys we will review. If it makes sen$e to tool, we will ask the factory to roll out a few boards to see for a QC check.

We will take it from there. If the boards don't work, we'll sell them as modern art on ebay...LOL!

Regardless those Amiga.org members that have contacted get first dibs on a production run.

All of this provided the get a complete BOM.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

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

Well, I actually can solder. :-)

Where to get the software and manual about which parts are needed and how to assemble it? :-)

[alexh]

little wrote:
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?

Nope, the first edition was published in 1986 shortly after the debut. The 1991 is an update for ECS.

When I said earlier "the copyright holders", I was of course trying to explain that the copyright for this book was originally owned by Commodore Amiga, but with all the history that has taken place, the current owners is unknown to me.

little wrote:
whoever owns the copyright to K&R 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

You are not comparing the same thing. The K&R C book describes a language and not an object (such as a program) this book describes a bit of patented hardware in English. If K&R were also the authors of the language, I am sure their copyright could have prevented others writing compilers, and probably other books which used explicit C-Syntax, if they had wanted to.

Publications of HRM's are common in the hardware world. They help extend the life of IP protection beyond patents. Whereas any patents registered for the Amiga would have expired by now, the publication of this book has extended protection by perhaps upto 70+ years after 1991.

[little]

Publications of this type are common in the hardware world. They help extend the life of IP protection beyond patents.

I think it is highly unlikely that after IP has changed from owner to owner that they have remembered to include this book in all the transactions.

Besides, there is something no one has said so far, last time we heard the newest/biggest plans from the owners of A inc. was about a year ago. They have sued Hyperion but seems they are going to finish and sell AmigaDOS 4.0 in a few weeks, which seems to imply that either A inc. has lost interest on the amiga (unless they can do a quick buck) or they simply cannot pay the lawyers bills, rendering the whole demand DOA.

[alexh]

IF the copyright owners know they are owners, and IF they know about MiniMig (I know that is a lot of IF's) as soon as someone started to make any serious money they would come out of the woodwork for their slice.

Something that anyone thinking of investing lots of money into this area should consider.

Making and selling unprogrammed boards, perhaps as "general purpose FPGA boards" should be fine.

[koaftder]

There won't be any large scale minimig production that I can see. It's going to be us geeks rolling our own and selling off some extras to our friends who can't solder.  :-)

[little]

as soon as someone started to make any serious money they would come out of the woodwork for their slice.

... and they could be counter sued for racketeering, because is the only reason for a demand, extort money, there is no piece of hardware in the minimig that would holds water in IP demand in a court of law.

[Crom00]

alexh wrote:
IF the copyright owners know they are owners, and IF they know about MiniMig (I know that is a lot of IF's) as soon as someone started to make any serious money they would come out of the woodwork for their slice.
 

Damn straight... the kicker is, it's not about who's right. It's about who has the most money to dump into legal proceedings.

Making and selling unprogrammed boards, perhaps as "general purpose FPGA boards" should be fine.
 

How would the end user go about programming or loading the emulated Amiga bits into the FPGA?
 

[Eclipse]

Hi,
 Not posted here for a very long time due to family problems.
Anyway dusted off my A1200, fitted a Chinnon(sp?) floppy, got the PCMCIA flash working, installed WB3.1 and have WHDload working fine. Next comes the CF to IDE HD

Then I spotted the Minimig threads popping up on here. I'm an electronics engineer and have done a lot of prototyping especially with SMT. I'm inclined to get one of the boards and see how long it takes to do. It would take a long time and the hardest part would be the gate array. It's not impossible though by any means.
How are you attempting to programme the FPGA?

[jkonstan]

Eclipse wrote:
Hi,
 Not posted here for a very long time due to family problems.
Anyway dusted off my A1200, fitted a Chinnon(sp?) floppy, got the PCMCIA flash working, installed WB3.1 and have WHDload working fine. Next comes the CF to IDE HD

Then I spotted the Minimig threads popping up on here. I'm an electronics engineer and have done a lot of prototyping especially with SMT. I'm inclined to get one of the boards and see how long it takes to do. It would take a long time and the hardest part would be the gate array. It's not impossible though by any means.
How are you attempting to programme the FPGA?

Spartan 3 FPGA is SRAM based.
On power up, the PIC microcontroller reads a file with the FPGA configuration data from a MMC Flash memory card in order to serially the load FPGA. Then, the  PIC microcontroller loads the kickstart image into the kickstart ram area and acts as an Amiga floppy emulator.

 :-)

[koaftder]

Assembly time should be about an hour per board.

[Eclipse]

jkonstan wrote:

Spartan 3 FPGA is SRAM based.
On power up, the PIC microcontroller reads a file with the FPGA configuration data from a MMC Flash memory card in order to serially the load FPGA. Then, the  PIC microcontroller loads the kickstart image into the kickstart ram area and acts as an Amiga floppy emulator.

 :-)

I see, PIC's are dead easy as well.

[TheMagicM]

there is one guy I know that has the connections to "GIT R DUN" but I doubt he'd be interested and I'm sure some folks wouldnt want to send $ in his direction.. (Bill Buck)

[little]

I'm sure some folks wouldnt want to send $ in his direction.. (Bill Buck)

From Genesi? Please correct me if I am wrong, but they have already won a legal demand vs. A inc. so I think they fit the bill to sell a "Finished product". AFAIK people dislike genesi because EFIKA does not run AmigaOS (or AROS or MorphOS or any amiga flavored OS). But minimig DOES run amigaOS up to 3.1, what is there to dislike?