Where are all the Minimigs?

[alexh]

Colin_Camper wrote:
Could you specify exactly how the minimig could possibly be in violation of copyright?

It is a translation of the copyrighted & published work "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual", English to Verilog.

As a homebrew project I doubt there is anyone left who cares enough to bother, but as a fully commercial project no company could take that risk.

[itix]

It is a translation of the copyrighted & published work "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual", English to Verilog.

Ehh? Is this new Hermanism?

[Colin_Camper]

It is a translation of the copyrighted & published work "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual", English to Verilog.

And...

How does that violate copyright?

You are in the U.K. You should know that reverse engineering is perfectly legal in the EU including Holland.

Have you not heard of ReactOS - the Windows clone OS built from the ground up using publicly available documentation.

Haiku
IBM PC Hardware
IBM PC BIOS

etc, etc.

but as a fully commercial project no company could take that risk.

You are wrong.
Are you saying, AMD, Compaq, Dell, Digital Research - none of these are commercial companies?

It's all very well talking rubbish on forums - but sometimes these witterings can add power to the bullies and intimidators like Scamiga Inc.

Look at the AROS name change - totally unnecessary but due in part to uninformed witterings on forums.  :-)

[dammy]

Look at the AROS name change - totally unnecessary but due in part to uninformed witterings on forums

For those of us who do live in the US, name change was a "good thing."  Still further with an eye to OEMs eventually using AROS, it was very much needed, IMO.  

Dammy
TeamAROS

[Colin_Camper]

I agree that the name change was a good thing.

I prefer the new name. It's more aligned with the FSF/GNU/Open tradition now and less with the tradition of empty promises, scams and shady shell games.

I should have used a different example!  :-)

[HenryCase]

RE PIC programming questions, it is possible to assemble a cheap programmer out of readily available parts.

The Minimig currently uses a PIC18LF252. I think 'F' refers to Flash memory. Can anyone tell me what the 'L' stands for?

I am currently assuming the PIC18LF252 is pin compatible with the PIC18F252. If this is the case, this is a suitable PIC programming solution:

Website: http://www.ic-prog.com/index1.htm
Hardware: http://www.ic-prog.com/ER1400.jpg
Software: http://www.ic-prog.com/download.html
More Software: http://www.electronics-lab.com/downloads/mcu/001/index.html

Can someone with more electronics experience please tell me if the ER1400 programmer will support the PIC18LF252. Thanks.

[alexh]

Colin_Camper wrote:
You are in the U.K. You should know that reverse engineering is perfectly legal in the EU including Holland.

I also know that publication of copyrighted material in translated form is a violation of said copyright.

Colin_Camper wrote:
You are wrong.

No I'm not.

Are you saying, AMD, Compaq, Dell, Digital Research - none of these are commercial companies?

All of these companies try to observe patents and copyrights owned by their peers. And whilst they reverse engineer IDEAS, they dont copy things 100%, register for register, bit for bit. If they have to, i.e. for compatibility, they license the technology from one another, usually through patent exchange etc.

You dont see AMD selling chips with 100% clones of an Intel P4 in them, and vice versa.

It's all very well talking rubbish on forums - but sometimes these witterings can add power to the bullies and intimidators like Scamiga Inc.

I've worked many years as a hardware engineer developing many chips, I've written many ASIC related patents and worked with many patent lawyers etc. I've done reverse engineering and been told how close I am alowed to copy another companies designs. While they are my opinion, they are not witterings. I'd be interested what experience you have? Ah.. yeah.. thought so :-)

Have you not heard of ReactOS - the Windows clone OS built from the ground up using publicly available documentation.

Publicly available NON COPYRIGHTED material?

[amazing]

@henry case

why u want to build it your own if u can buy them for cheap on ripoffbay?

[MiniMorph]

It seems you know little about copyrights and Patents.

Cloning the hardware does not infringe copyright as the function of the Amiga has been copied NOT the design itself.

Patents in most places last a maximum of 20 years so anything on the market on or before 1988 is fine from a patent point of view.

The software loaded from the SD card is a whole different matter ! The software is however not supplied, so where no copyrighted material is supplied I cannot see what is the legal issue ?

[alexh]

MiniMorph wrote:
It seems you know little about copyrights and Patents.

You'd be suprised.

Looking at your site, (assuming you are fordp) you come from a technical background?

Cloning the hardware does not infringe copyright as the function of the Amiga has been copied NOT the design itself.

The design is described in detail in the HRM, it has numeric constant values, state machines, timing diagrams etc. The author has said that he converted this documentation into what became MiniMig.

If it had been an abstract, high level description of the function of an Amiga, I dont think we'd be having this debate.

That said, there are quite a few subtle differences between the Amiga chipset as described by the HRM and MiniMig, maybe enough to differentiate them, maybe not. I'll leave it upto someone trying to sell it commercially to work out if it is enough.

Patents in most places last a maximum of 20 years so anything on the market on or before 1988 is fine from a patent point of view.

Yeah, sometimes 20, sometimes 25. I mentioned it several times in the past in other threads. If there are any patents covering AGA I speculated it would be a few more years for them expire.

But we weren't talking patents, we were talking copyright.

I was just trying to offer one possible explaination as to "Where are all the MiniMig's?" and why no company had picked up the manufacture, the point of this thread ;-)

[Belial6]

I'm not buying the copyright line.  If documenting a product gave you infinite monopoly power, no one would bother patenting anything.  They would just copyright everything.  The description of the Amiga is also just a list of facts.  You cannot copyright a list of facts.  You can copyright the presentation, but not the data itself.

Now, I don't know Verilog, but it seems very unlikely that the code is laid out in the same order as the book.  It is also very unlikely that it is truly a one for one translation.

For you to be correct, it would also have to be true that the use of reference materials for any other project, FPGA or not, is a copyright violation.  I'm just not buying it.

How about some links to actual rulings on the use of reference works being copyright violations, because right now you are sounding an awful lot like a troll.

[CD32Freak]

@HenryCase

Can anyone tell me what the 'L' stands for

According to the Digi-Key catalog the LF version operates with a VCC range of 2.0 ~ 5.5V and the F version with a range of 4.2 ~ 5.5V :-)

[itix]

The design is described in detail in the HRM, it has numeric constant values, state machines, timing diagrams etc. The author has said that he converted this documentation into what became MiniMig.

But then WinUAE would be illegal too. And so would be AROS and MorphOS. AROS is Amiga Rom Kernel Reference Manual translated to C ;-)

Minimig is completely legal product as long as it does not violate Amiga patents and is not shipped with illegal copies of copyrighted material. That means they can not ship Minimig with the original Kickstart ROM without license from Amiga Inc but they could ship Minimig with Kickstart ROM clone instead (if there was any).

I was just trying to offer one possible explaination as to "Where are all the MiniMig's?" and why no company had picked up the manufacture, the point of this thread

I think real problem is funding and marketing. Especially marketing because Minimig can not be labeled as Amiga unless Amiga Inc loses its trademarks.

[alexh]

itix wrote:
But then WinUAE would be illegal too. And so would be AROS and MorphOS. AROS is Amiga Rom Kernel Reference Manual translated to C ;-)

Heh, yeah maybe ;-) But if you were the company considering manufacturing them would you take the word of anyone who wasnt a qualified techie lawyer? Me neither.

Especially marketing because Minimig can not be labeled as Amiga unless Amiga Inc loses its trademarks.

I dunno anything about trademarks. Not something an engineer ever deals with. I would have imagined they could get away with the phrase "Amiga(TM) compatible" on the box and put appropriate TM acknowledgement bits in small writing?

But then again if "Lindows" and "Mike Rowe Soft" were trademark infringements who knows?

Like I said before, if no-one at Amiga Inc. cared about the classic then there would be no problem. However they have a track record of trying to milk their ownership of Amiga for everything they can.

[Colin_Camper]

@alexh

I also know that publication of copyrighted material in translated form is a violation of said copyright.

You obviously have not grasped what Dennis did with verilog or how he used the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual to help achieve this.  :-(

No I'm not.

I imagine you never are wrong.  :-D

they dont copy things 100%, register for register, bit for bit.

Nor did Dennis. Did you even read the minimig thread?

You dont see AMD selling chips with 100% clones of an Intel P4 in them

Of course not. They sell (effectively) 100% software compatible chips just like Dennis produced a reasonable compatible version of the OCS.

I've written many ASIC related patents and worked with many patent lawyers etc.

Patent numbers? No I thought not.  :lol:

I'd be interested what experience you have? Ah.. yeah.. thought so

Twenty five years in commercial electronics and IT. Ah.. yeah.. and I'm not an arrogant {bleep}.  :-)

[freqmax]

Weather the minimig1 hardware is possible to challenge without software, I dault it.
The configuration (*.bit) files might be another story. But forcing that of the net.. Not likely to succeed. There's a lot of other software where the infrigment is clear. And it's still online.