What's the point of the MiniMig?

[alexh]

skurk wrote:
- Brand new hardware, will last longer

ral-clan wrote:
When all the original A500s are gone

Homer wrote:
And what happens when the A500's have all gone  :-?

downix wrote:
How long will your A500 last, however?

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you. Apart from the floppy disk drive, the A500 and A600's (with the exception of the A500+) are like concrete. They will last for many, many years. Considering the MiniMig's are being home made, probably to a much lower quality standard to the factory built Amiga's the physical hardware may not last that long.

MiniMig was created for fun, and should be treated like that. If you start rationalising it, MiniMig cannot compete on price, expandability or compatibility.

Form factor is it's one true "Amiga" plus point.

Other plus points are that it is a reconfigurable computer. It can be reconfigured as an Amstrad 464, a Sinclair Spectrum, a C64 or even an Atari ST etc.

[downix]

alexh wrote:

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you. Apart from the floppy disk drive, the A500 and A600's (with the exception of the A500+) are like concrete. They will last for many, many years. Considering the MiniMig's are being home made, probably to a much lower quality standard to the factory built Amiga's the physical hardware may not last that long.

And if the MiniMig breaks, you can make another, and another, and another....

[Tomas]

I think all my a500 is starting to show signs of aging.. Main problem is the floppy disk drives. One of the floppy drives seems to be a bit out of alignment, since no other amiga can read the disk written by that drive. 2 other floppy drives have problems with the instert disk button/pin.. Sometimes it might suddenly act like you ejected the disk for a second, even though you never did.

[Tomas]

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you. Apart from the floppy disk drive, the A500 and A600's (with the exception of the A500+) are like concrete. They will last for many, many years.

Yes.. but how much longer? I have already heard of plenty amigas dying in storage mainly due to caps drying out or similar. I doubt there will be that many working systems left in lets say 20 years from now.

[mike-]

The Minimig is essentially our chance to do what amiga and ack so far has failed to do, hardware.

[gdanko]

And if the MiniMig breaks, you can make another, and another, and another....

The chances of all four of my A500s dying are very slim. I paid probably 50USD for all of them.

[gdanko]

mike- wrote:
The Minimig is essentially our chance to do what amiga and ack so far has failed to do, hardware.

And this is great, if it can be a more expandable system.

[Ral-Clan]

Yeah, that's the big issue for me.  The open source nature of the MiniMig finally puts the Amiga's hardware development future in the hands of the user community.

The MiniMig is open source through reverse engineering, the original A500 is not unfortunately.  So even if someone online got the original production plans for the Commodore A500/A1200/A2000/A4000 etc., no-one would be allowed to do more runs of the hardware, or build on it, due to copyright.

[alexh]

downix wrote:
And if the MiniMig breaks, you can make another, and another, and another....

1) Good luck finding some of the MiniMig parts in as little as 6 months or so. Several parts on the 1.x board are already no longer made. (Admittedly you could redesign another which used different components)

2) You could get almost any problem with an A500 fixed for less ;-)

I think MiniMig is cool, and if the price comes down, or the PCB features go up, I'll nab one.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Minimig shows actually a new insight: open source computers. Cheap-ass integrated circuits which are easily programmable, makes it a lot easier to design computers yourself.
Ahhh, a future, of open-source machines, with open source OS wich neatly makes advantage of the hardware, in harmony so to say...
tis a good thought :-)

[Crom00]

The money you save by being able to use off the shelf, VGA monitors (50z of course), Keyboards, and mouse, and no scan doubler makes it worth while.

A flicker fixer alone costs $175. Having Amber exexuted in an FPGA is a big deal as any future versions will have this functionality.

Scart to Component adapter alone is $60 usd.

The costs add up when you try to use that $25 A500 with modern ameneties we all enjoy.

Cable costs alone get ridiculous as you can only get them on ebay. Yet people thow away PS2 peripherals and VGA cables.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Crom00 wrote:
*cut* and VGA cables.

not with todays copper prices. hell, vga cables are expensive

[alexh]

Crom00 wrote:
The money you save by being able to use off the shelf, VGA monitors (50z of course), Keyboards, and mouse, and no scan doubler makes it worth while.

You're fooling yourself.

A flicker fixer alone costs $175.

You can get external ones for as little as $60 from Roy.

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=32365

RGB SCART cables for LCDTV's or Plasma's can be bought for as little as $1.98, I know I just bought 50 ;-)

[little]

Alexh has a point I have understood from the beggining. ATM the minimig is a nice project for enthusiasts. To become really an option it has to be mass-produced to reduce the price, like the direct-c64 thing. Only then the advantages will outweight the cost. That is why insist it is important to simplify the design by "inserting" the cpu in a xcs3500e spartan fpga and removing the pic by using the SPI functionality to load directly from the SD/MMC stick.

[motorollin]

ral-clan wrote:
a clone A4000 then a new MiniMig 060/PPC with PCI slots, USB, etc. etc. etc.

--
moto

[Illuwatar]

I did my version of the Minimig just for the fun of it (I have a fully working A500+ with all options on it but hardly use it due to lack on easy access to software/games) and also to be albe to use ADF-files directly. The possibility to use standard PS2 keyboard and mouse adds to it, VGA too (I added S-video and Composite too in my alternated design).

And finally - there are two things more: Nostalgia and "Because We Can..."  ;-)