First ebay Minimig sells for £214 (305 EUR / $428 US)

[countzero]

there's one thing I wonder about minimig building. PIC and the FPGA must be pre programmed. programming the PIC would not be very difficult, but how do you program the FPGA ? or is it programmed dynamically every boot by the PIC from some media ? (sd card ?)

[McVenco]

weirdami wrote:

The biggest funny is that Dennis wasn't even an Amiga user

I don't think that's entirely true. I spoke with him on the recent Dutch Commodore User's Group meeting, and apart from the Minimig he also brought his A3000, which I understood he has had for several years.

Nevertheless, for someone with no FPGA designing history, it's been a hell of an effort to accomplish getting the complete work done (from idea to working final product) in just a year. R-e-s-t-e-c-p for that! :-)

[whiteb]

countzero wrote:
there's one thing I wonder about minimig building. PIC and the FPGA must be pre programmed. programming the PIC would not be very difficult, but how do you program the FPGA ? or is it programmed dynamically every boot by the PIC from some media ? (sd card ?)

Pic is your "Floppy Controller".

At boot, the Pic Firsts listens briefly to the serial port for any contact for Firmware updates (If you have Bootloader installed), Then proceeds to load FPGA core from MMC, which gets Uploaded to the chip.

The system then undergoes a Warm boot, and the Pic then loads Kickstart into Ram (Or the FPGA does it i cant remember), and then warm Reboots once again, booting you into Kickstart.  Then you can load games/Workbench or stuff.

MMC/SD *MUST* contain 2 files in the root directory.  Minimig1.bin (FPGA Core) and kick.rom

[freqmax]

What's the easiest way to program the PIC18 for this project?
(optimized for simplicity and minimum amount of components)

[koaftder]

freqmax wrote:
What's the easiest way to program the PIC18 for this project?
(optimized for simplicity and minimum amount of components)

There is a plethora of schematics and free software out there for programming pics with parts you can easily pick up at radio shack, but I use the PicKit 2 from microchip. For $50 dollars, it's well worth it and very easy to use, it even comes with a cd and a demo board. Dennis also uses the pic kit 2.

[amazing]

wizard66 sells the pic chips for around 17 euro i thought

so if u want it preprogrammed buy it from him on ebey

[countzero]

@whiteb

ok, I see now. This is a good approach which allows for core updates in the future if any improvements need to be made. Thanks !

[wizard66]

2e and 3e Minimig completed in 8 hours a unit.
So practice is helping.
Now I have to wait for parts from the US(DigiKey)
Building 6 more Minimig's
Also I wil make one Minimig for a guy in the UK (PCB and Spartan and memory he will send accros the nordsea)
Mebay I'l make some more but time wil tell.
The cost of 180 euro's was whitout the houseing, but all minimig's I sell wil have one

Housing ebay:http://cgi.ebay.nl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250181224669&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=015

Pics I sell just to help out anybody that wants to make a minimig, There is no sense in everybody have to buy a prommer...

ebay pic18:http://cgi.ebay.nl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250181204059&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=015

So back to soldering I say ;-)

[tonyyeb]

The second one has just been won by buy it now!

[amigadave]

wizard66 wrote:
2e and 3e Minimig completed in 8 hours a unit.
So practice is helping.
Now I have to wait for parts from the US(DigiKey)
Building 6 more Minimig's
Also I wil make one Minimig for a guy in the UK (PCB and Spartan and memory he will send accros the nordsea)
Mebay I'l make some more but time wil tell.
The cost of 180 euro's was whitout the houseing, but all minimig's I sell wil have one

Housing ebay:http://cgi.ebay.nl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250181224669&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=015

Pics I sell just to help out anybody that wants to make a minimig, There is no sense in everybody have to buy a prommer...

ebay pic18:http://cgi.ebay.nl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250181204059&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=015

So back to soldering I say ;-)

Nice work and great idea to offer the pic18 pre-programmed.  What would the total cost be for one of each, case and pic18, including shipment to the USA (California zip code 92314 to be exact)?

[amigadave]

by koaftder on 2007/10/29 21:02:21

I'd say someone with some basic skills who is familiar with smt stuff should be able to put together a minimig in about an hour.

I only took me about 5 minutes max to lay down the fpga, and thats the hardest component on the board. As small as the leads may be, you still don't need any magnification or special tools to get it on there.

Maybe with your eyes no magnification is needed, but with these 51 year old eyes I will absolutely be using magnification!  :lol:

[wizard66]

@ Cult Member:
The pic travels with the housing so no shiping cost for Pic18 in combination.
Just say your from Amiga.org so I know !!

[wizard66]

koaftder wrote:
I'd say someone with some basic skills who is familiar with smt stuff should be able to put together a minimig in about an hour.

Impossible with the minimig trust me !!

[Pyromania]

wizard66 I just sent you payment via paypal for my beautiful Minimeg. Thank you so much for all your hard work building it. The quality of your work really shows off in the pictures. I hope you have great success selling the rest of them. Minimeg is going to be the prized Amiga @ DiscreetFX!

[koaftder]

wizard66 wrote:

koaftder wrote:
I'd say someone with some basic skills who is familiar with smt stuff should be able to put together a minimig in about an hour.

Impossible with the minimig trust me !!

If you have all your parts laid out and your bom on the table you really can do this in about an hour. How long does it take to lay down the microprocessor? A few minutes at most. I got the fpga on there in about 5 minutes. It only takes a few seconds to lay down a chip resistor or capacitor. Soldering down thru hole dsubs takes less than a minute.

The minimig is not a big board and doesn't have that many parts, the parts it does have are trivial to solder.

[amazing]

@Koaftder
stop the smacktalk..u cant put the minimig together in 1hour
impossible...

u also have to test the 5v circuit..or did u forget about that?

and i suppose u want to have a nice clean board with all components a bit lined out?