let's dream about the mini-minimig for a bit...

[Johan Samuelsson]

Here's my vision/dream.

Imagine having the mini-minimig inside an A500 mouse.
The mouse chord carries the image to the TV.
The keyboard is attached wirelessly.

It comes bundled with DPaintIII/Asm-One/PT.

Oh boy.

How does your Mini-Minimig look?

[motorollin]

It has AGA, an 060, and is embedded in my brain.

--
moto

[CD32Freak]

Here is what the mini Minimig looks like:
http://www.illuwatar.se/project_pages/mini-minimig/mini-minimig.htm
:-D  ;-)

[yssing]

That's a pretty cool design you got there

[RedskullDC]

Hi CD32Freak,

CD32Freak wrote:
Here is what the mini Minimig looks like:
http://www.illuwatar.se/project_pages/mini-minimig/mini-minimig.htm
:-D  ;-)

Looks pretty cool  :-)

A bigger FPGA might be an advantage for expansion later on (XC31000 for example).

Cheers,
Red

[Lorraine]

/

[KThunder]

wait i thought minimig was about finally not dreaming for a while

i want a pda/cell phone minimig :-D

[Illuwatar]

RedskullDC wrote:
Hi CD32Freak,

CD32Freak wrote:
Here is what the mini Minimig looks like:
http://www.illuwatar.se/project_pages/mini-minimig/mini-minimig.htm
:-D  ;-)

Looks pretty cool  :-)

A bigger FPGA might be an advantage for expansion later on (XC31000 for example).

Cheers,
Red

If You find a way for homebrewers to mount a BGA to the PCB in a cheap and simple way that could be performed at home, I will be more than happy to design the board...

As it is now, the largest Xilinx FGPA in a hand-solderable package is 500k gates. Any larger uses BGA.

[freqmax]

OR one uses an existing development board and make an external board with all the specifics like flashholder, serial, vga etc..

BGA->SMD can be accomplished by making a board using some chinese manufacturers that does assembly.

[little]

CD32Freak wrote:
Here is what the mini Minimig looks like:
http://www.illuwatar.se/project_pages/mini-minimig/mini-minimig.htm

I do not ask for much:

1) More RAM. Why all minimig implementations so far have only 2 MB in RAM? It would be a lot better to have 16! I know the amiga would use 12 MB at most (2 chip ram + 9.5 fast ram + 512 kb rom) but the extra ram may be used by other hardware implementations (like arcade games).

2) HDMI out. It is digital, it should not be hard to implement and would allow conection will new HDTV tvs.

3) Hard disk file (HDF) support.

[FrenchShark]

Illuwatar wrote:

RedskullDC wrote:

A bigger FPGA might be an advantage for expansion later on (XC3S1000 for example).

Cheers,
Red

If You find a way for homebrewers to mount a BGA to the PCB in a cheap and simple way that could be performed at home, I will be more than happy to design the board...

As it is now, the largest Xilinx FGPA in a hand-solderable package is 500k gates. Any larger uses BGA.

We should move to Altera FPGAs. The Cyclone III chips with QFP-240 package have pretty decent sizes. I use a 16k LEs one (the smallest available) which is equivalent to a XC3S1000. There are enough gates to put a 68000 inside and enough I/Os to have Audio, 30-bit VGA, 8MB SRAM, 2 x PS2, IDE and 2 joystick ports and I still have 10 I/Os available. Moreover, if you use the serializer trick (like on the AGA Amigas) for the joystick ports, you can save 5 more I/Os.

Regards,

Frederic

[freqmax]

And Altera tools are M$-win32 only, unless you will sell your first born..

You could have a look at Actel FPGA.

[Illuwatar]

FrenchShark wrote:

Illuwatar wrote:

RedskullDC wrote:

A bigger FPGA might be an advantage for expansion later on (XC3S1000 for example).

Cheers,
Red

If You find a way for homebrewers to mount a BGA to the PCB in a cheap and simple way that could be performed at home, I will be more than happy to design the board...

As it is now, the largest Xilinx FGPA in a hand-solderable package is 500k gates. Any larger uses BGA.

We should move to Altera FPGAs. The Cyclone III chips with QFP-240 package have pretty decent sizes. I use a 16k LEs one (the smallest available) which is equivalent to a XC3S1000. There are enough gates to put a 68000 inside and enough I/Os to have Audio, 30-bit VGA, 8MB SRAM, 2 x PS2, IDE and 2 joystick ports and I still have 10 I/Os available. Moreover, if you use the serializer trick (like on the AGA Amigas) for the joystick ports, you can save 5 more I/Os.

Regards,

Frederic

Thank You for the tip. I could look into that Altera chip. For me, it doesn't matter what is written on the FPGA as long as the code could be ported. Regarding IDE - isn't that what the PIC should do (emulate harddisk-files from UAE)? And for AGA, 24-bit VGA should be enough? Finally, who are willing to take the task of implementing AGA into the FPGA? And if we are into it - going for AGA (A1200) would require a swap of CPU, from the 68000 to a full 32-bit one... (and there we lost the "Mini" in this thing).

The idea of using a development board is fine for developing and testing, but for a final solution, it is not the best option.

[RedskullDC]

Hi Illuwatar, FrenchShark et al.

Illuwatar wrote:
If You find a way for homebrewers to mount a BGA to the PCB in a cheap and simple way that could be performed at home, I will be more than happy to design the board...

As it is now, the largest Xilinx FGPA in a hand-solderable package is 500k gates. Any larger uses BGA.

Good point, most people won't be confident usen a toaster/re-flow oven at home  :-(

If you don't mind having a 2-tier board, something like this:
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/moelbryn/darnaw1.html
could be used.
They sell the PGA Sockets to match.
PGA socket could be mounted on the underside of a mini-mig specific adapter board which could plug onto the top of the darnaw board.

Avnet also do a *VERY* small virtex4 mini-module, which could be similarly employed.

Thank You for the tip. I could look into that Altera chip. For me, it doesn't matter what is written on the FPGA as long as the code could be ported. Regarding IDE - isn't that what the PIC should do (emulate harddisk-files from UAE)? And for AGA, 24-bit VGA should be enough? Finally, who are willing to take the task of implementing AGA into the FPGA? And if we are into it - going for AGA (A1200) would require a swap of CPU, from the 68000 to a full 32-bit one... (and there we lost the "Mini" in this thing).

The idea of using a development board is fine for developing and testing, but for a final solution, it is not the best option.

24bits is correct for AGA, 8bits/per colour = 16.7M colour palette.

Prefer the Altera tools myself also.
Xilinx still don't have X64 support for their EDK software, plus I get sick of downloading 1Gb+ service packs every couple of weeks for their ISE :getmad:

Having said that, I am currently tinkering with porting the minimigtg68 to the Digilent Nexys2-1200 board.
Have modded the board for 12bit colour, few pics can be seen at:
http://gamesource.groups.yahoo.com/group/minimigtg68/

Really like what you are doing with the PCB's anyway   ;-)

Cheers,
Red

[downix]

Not that dissimilar to my own design, save I have a 2.5" IDE connector on the mobo.