FPGAARCADE minimig compatible board, comments?

[Darrin]

tonyyeb wrote:

Oh dear... Things have started to go downhill!

I'm available for a job in marketing if anybody wants to hire me.  I'm sure Commodore would have snapped me up!  :-D

[TheDaddy]

@all

Does this new motherboard mean that it is going to be in direct competition with the Minimig and eventually kill it off?

Good specs by the way. :-)

[tonyyeb]

I would have thought so.

[HenryCase]

tonyyeb wrote:
I would have thought so.

Yes and no. Both FPGAARCADE and Minimig can co-exist, but it seems a shame that we won't be able to speed up development time by using a single platform.

In fact there are a few other platforms to consider here. FrenchShark already mentioned in this thread that he is working on a Minimig compatible board. There's also the Minimorph project (I've been assured the website will be updated soon). There's the two brilliant Minimig v1.1 redesigns done by illuwater. Finally we have the Altera DE1 and DE2 versions of the Minimig (with the CPU built in to the FPGA).

Its great that all these versions exist, but I do hope that the work done on all projects will merge into one awesome version of the Minimig board... Minimig v2. It would be great to have a big enough FPGA to fit a fast 68k CPU core in alongside an AGA implementation (like from the DE1/DE2 design), as well as the best from all the rest of the projects:

1. Friendly form factors, illuwater has the right idea here.
2. Ethernet connection, one of the best features of the Minimorph IIRC.
3. JAMMA arcade daughter board from FPGAARCADE (not really essential but I think its an awesome idea!). On a more essential level, 32MB of DDR memory is a good idea.
4. I don't know much about FrenchShark's board, but 30-bit VGA sounds like a very welcome feature, especially for supporting 24bit AGA output.

It would also be wise to make sure the HDD or SD card interface offered fast read/write speeds (or as fast as possible). Whether its best to use a fast microcontroller or  handle the whole read/write operation from the FPGA I don't know.

An expansion port is a must.

We'd get where we wanted to go to quicker if we had a single reference platform to work from that was future proofed (as much as is feasible), though I'm grateful for all Minimig development.

[tonyyeb]

My answer was based on the extra diversity of the FPGA-ARCADE which will mean more demand, more support and a lack of both for Minimig.

I'm sure given the choice of running a device that had Amiga OCS soley as a platform and running one that offered Amiga OCS (potentially ECS and AGA) plus 10-20 more others.... with potential for even more in the future... more people would choose FPGA-ARCADE over Minimig.

[FrenchShark]

@mikej,

by chance, do you have a 68000 "clone" in VHDL ? (I do not consider TG68 from Tobias as a perfect clone since some 68000 bus signals are missing).
The reason is that on EAB, we were thinking about making an accelerator board for A500/A2000/A600 by using a FPGA.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=36596
BTW, I am looking for an A500 to connect to a stratix dev board so I can spy the 68000 bus behaviour with SignalTap II and then replicate it in VHDL (I do not trust 100% Freescale docs :-)).
Any person on this forum can PM me for an offer.
I am in the US, btw.

Regards,

Frederic

[HenryCase]

tonyyeb wrote:
My answer was based on the extra diversity of the FPGA-ARCADE which will mean more demand, more support and a lack of both for Minimig.

Yes but tonyyeb, there is nothing stopping Minimig supporting more systems. This is a feature people were discussing before the Minimig was even released IIRC. The basis behind your convictions seems to be down to the more generic name of the FPGAARCADE, nothing more.

[Tron2k2]

PM sent

[TheDaddy]

Edited from this: (before people start taking the mickey, I am not very well today sorry)

What a shame, it looks like the end for the Minimig. :-(
Unless development continues obviously.

to this:

Sorry, what I meant was, it looks to me like it's the end for the Minimig if the Minimig developers move away from it and onto the FPGAARCADE.

We also need to see what ACube will do about it. They might decide to stop producing Minimigs

[bloodline]

TheDaddy wrote:
What a shame, it looks like the end for the Minimig. :-(

Unless development continues obviously.

That's a really odd post! "It's the end, unless it isn't!"... Anyway the Minimig is essentialy just software... And is required by the FPGAARCHADE so it's not even close the end.

In terms of the FPGA board the currently run the minimig code... It needs to be able to replace my A1200 to remain interesting.

[tonyyeb]

HenryCase wrote:

Yes but tonyyeb, there is nothing stopping Minimig supporting more systems. This is a feature people were discussing before the Minimig was even released IIRC. The basis behind your convictions seems to be down to the more generic name of the FPGAARCADE, nothing more.

But isn't the Minimig limited to devices that ran a 68000?

[TheDaddy]

Sorry, what I meant was, it looks to me like it's the end for the Minimig if the Minimig developers move away from it and onto the FPGAARCADE.

We also need to see what ACube will do about it. They might decide to stop producing Minimigs.

[cpfuture]

Whichever project 'survives' the longest, it is so inspiring to see the community designing stuff like MiniMig, NatAmi and FPGAARCADE.  Good stuff!
:cheers:

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:

TheDaddy wrote:
What a shame, it looks like the end for the Minimig. :-(

Unless development continues obviously.

That's a really odd post! "It's the end, unless it isn't!"... Anyway the Minimig is essentialy just software... And is required by the FPGAARCHADE so it's not even close the end.

Second guessing what TheDaddy was referring to, I think he means the end of the Minimig v1.1 hardware (TheDaddy is making a case for this device so this would matter to him).

The Minimig firmware will continue in some form, but the various hardware platforms that are supporting it (or aim to support it) may not. The biggest drawback with the Minimig v1.1 design is its lack of expandability, which meant that it was never going to serve our needs on a long term basis (which is why I laid out points for the v2 Minimig hardware design which would provide hardware that was more future proofed).

That is not to say that the Minimig v1.1 design is useless, far from it, it is a capable bit of kit. It would be possible to upgrade the FPGA firmware so it ran a more compatible OCS or ECS chipset (running the vast majority of games and apps for A500/A600/A1000/A2000). Not only that, but it is capable of recreating other non-Amiga systems, as well as usage in other forms (playing mp3s for example, maybe even videos).

I would say that the FPGAARCADE is complimentary to the Minimig v1.1 and vice versa, as most of the work done on one could be ported to the other.

[HenryCase]

tonyyeb wrote:

HenryCase wrote:

Yes but tonyyeb, there is nothing stopping Minimig supporting more systems. This is a feature people were discussing before the Minimig was even released IIRC. The basis behind your convictions seems to be down to the more generic name of the FPGAARCADE, nothing more.

But isn't the Minimig limited to devices that ran a 68000?

There's plenty of systems that used a 68000, and the FPGA alone could emulate a number of older systems. It might even be possible to use a FPGA-recreated CPU with the 68000 acting as an accelerator to give us even more system options. The FPGAARCADE does have a bigger FPGA than the Minimig v1.1 and a number of other nice features, but to replace the Minimig v1.1 entirely it would need to provide a level of future proofing which I'm not convinced it does.

Realise that the cores first designed for the FPGAARCADE and Minimig v1.1 will be fairly simple systems like the Atari 2600, Amstrad CPC, etc... (or ones that rely on the power of the 68000 CPU). By the time we get to more complex systems (the NeoGeo is probably the most advanced system we can hope for the Minimig v1.1 to handle) then the Minimig v1.1 would have had at least a few years on the market and Minimig v2 could be released, providing the future proofing we need (if the designer has any sense).

I'm not knocking the FPGAARCADE, I just think it will be a complimentary device rather than a Minimig-killer.

[itix]

What a shame, it looks like the end for the Minimig. :-(

Unless development continues obviously.

Strange logic.

(Added in an edit:)
AFAIK Minimig is open sourced and anyone can continue improving Minimig. If nobody does that Acube can start selling FPGAARCADE instead... or someone else can continue to sell Minimig.

But really, if Minimig is not sold anymore, so what? There is FPGAARCADE.