Minimig user feedback required

[denli]

@Dwyloc
A Minimig v2 doesn't need to be Mini-ITX. That's just one of Illuwatar's current projects. As is his Mini Minimig.

@omnicron10
C-One isn't open source and, I suspect, neither will Clone-A be.
And the C-One is also bigger than the Minimig.

PS. The pictures in this thread is somewhat bloated.
Could you please scale them down? DS.

[Dwyloc]

denli wrote:
@Dwyloc
A Minimig v2 doesn't need to be Mini-ITX. That's just one of Illuwatar's current projects.

Yes I am well aware of that I just thought it was worth speaking up on the minimigs main selling point that has got a lot of people in the 30 something age group I know who were former Amiga owners interested in the minimig.

Yes I know we are all getting older these days :-(  But our toys are getting better :-D

You can already build a faster min-itx system that will run WinUAE very nicely less money than a Minimig by the time you add a good case and joysticks but it just dose not have the same cool factor as the minimg thanks to the cool imac and shiny back custom made Minimig cases.

[recidivist]

atheist


 Thanks for noting there are still modem users out here;what our friends in some places may not understand is much of the U.S. is sparsely populated comparatively,and it is not profitable for the providers of high-speed internet.
 I MAY finally have wireless internet as an option at $40 monthly plus taxes ;the standard DSL line here costs $49.95 plus all the normal phone taxes and access fees,plus a $4.95 special tax on the DSL .So dial-up is $19.95 vs. DSL $54.90!(in addition to the basic voice phone service.

 Still ,rather than redoing the FPGA for modem,just? implement USB and use USB external modem.

 Applause to all those involved in minimig so far !!!!
 

[yakumo9275]

to use usb, you need a usb stack in software, usb has a TONNE of overhead, its a piss poor bus as far as cpu consumption goes.

[FrenchShark]

Hello,

I think we should drop Xilinx and go for Altera : the Cyclone III FPGAs are huge in comparison and still with QFP package.
For example the EP3C16Q240 has 160 available IOs and has twice the logic than the X3S400 from the Minimig.

My blue box running 1943 has this FPGA, I put a 8MB SSRAM, and IDE port, a 30-bit VGA, 2 joysticks ports, 2 PS2 ports + lot of spare IOs (about 20).

If you use a SDRAM instead of SSRAM (10 IOs saved), a 74LV166 serializer on the joystick ports (like on the AGA machines, 5 more IOs saved), a 24-bit VGA (6 IOs saved), you can add USB through ULPI (12 IOs used), Ethernet through MII (16 IOs) or RMII (10 IOs).

Regards,

Frederic

[omnicron10]

Well the source code for the minimig port is open source and they have a lot of docs on the website to allow third parties
to write for the c-one board.  Yes the c-one is bigger but it has a lot more IO.  

You can look at the source code on the download page just put up tonight.

http://www.c64upgra.de/c-one/

Most of the cores are open source.

The C-one is larger but it fits pretty well in a standard ATX case and Power Supply.

denli
@omnicron10
C-One isn't open source and, I suspect, neither will Clone-A be.
And the C-One is also bigger than the Minimig.

[Belial6]

On very small priority as wishes come, I was thinking about what Belial6 suggested.  I would do it slightly differently as I can't see his point exactly but his concept is good food for thought!  

The point is to take a very  small number of I/O pins that are available, and make an interface that is standard, cheap, can add an unlimited number of devices with no need to change the basic MiniMig board, has very little cpu load, and can work with all of the software that is looking for hardware that is directly hooked to an Amiga.

Right now, I don't hook printers up to my desktop.  I put them on the lan directly, or hook them to my files server.  I also don't put all of my disk storage on my PC.  My scanner is also sitting directly on the lan.  Why?  Because I want to be able to put these devices anywhere in the house.  I don't want them all sitting on my desk.  I also don't want to limit these devices to a single computer.  By putting these components on the network, the MiniMig can access any device that a PC can access.  Heck, I would thing MiniMig users would be MORE concerned with not having all of the devices sitting next the the computer.

For those that don't want their MiniMig to be stand alone, they can have that with greater functionality than making dedicated ports.  As I have said in other posts.  Just make a small board that untunnles the virtual port, and hook up your device.

[TheDaddy]

From my point of view, as the designer of the Minimig cases, I can still carry on supplying and designing enclosures for all these projects AS LONG as I get the FINAL board.

I agree with dwyloc though that the size of the Minimig, the fact that it's already a mature product, that it already has its own custom case, that it already has a user base and a cool developer (Jakub) :-) all these points make it cool and inviting.

:-)

[Schoenfeld]

denli wrote:

@omnicron10
C-One isn't open source and, I suspect, neither will Clone-A be.
And the C-One is also bigger than the Minimig.

Although you were addressing Omnicron10, I'll answer this first-hand: The C-One was always open to a degree where other developers could take part in further development.

The schematics of the mainboard were open from day one:

http://c64upgra.de/c-one/tech/c1schematics.pdf

and the schematics of the extender card have been opened even before the board was delivered, you might want to call it "day minus 5" ;-)

http://c64upgra.de/c-one/tech/c1_extender_schem.pdf

I have just updated some info in the extender schematics yesterday, as I have changed the type of capacitors in the audio output stage.

Since the C-One has a fairly complicated topology, Tobias made example sources and IO bridges for other FPGA coders. The GBridge allows using all the IO hooked to the 1k30 from the 1k100 side, so you don't have to worry about inter-chip communication. The whole system appears like a single FPGA with that.

The first person to make use of that was Peter Wendrich, who made a C64 core. I should say "the" C64 core, as we have put quite some time into making this cycle-exact, and today, it's superior to many C64 software-emulators. The C64 core was open-source until release V0.27, and the current one is closed until the Chameleon is out and selling. All our findings about the C64 will be open, not only in source, but also in clear-text documentation. You will be surprised at how much documentation about the C64 out there is wrong!

The Minimig core port for the C-One already includes Jakub Bednarski's changes, and the source is open. While the ARM board for the Minimig board looks cool, the C-One sports another 68000 processor in place of the PIC. This already gives lots more performance on that part, and still, the FPGA space is only used to about 65%. Yes, you can expect updates from our side, and as GPL requires, this will be open-source. Anyone who makes an FPGA board with all the kind of IO that the C-One has will be able to use our mods on his board.

Jens

[denli]

@Schoenfeld
Cool  :-)
I wasn't aware of that. It's not mentioned anywhere on the About page.

Where can I find the license agreement?
It didn't show up when I searched for it at the Twiki-site (http://www.c-one.net/tiki-index.php) either.

It's good to know that it's open source but if anyone is about to build a C-One for them self, they better know what they can and can't do.

[denli]

yakumo9275 wrote:
to use usb, you need a usb stack in software, usb has a TONNE of overhead, its a piss poor bus as far as cpu consumption goes.

If you put the stack in the Amiga, yes.
I have no idea how the Minimig ARM Controller works but I would suspect that it already have some kind of USB-stack of it's own (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Then you would only need to present the Minimig ARM Controller USB as another kind of device that is less taxing for the Amiga/Minimig and let the Minimig ARM Controller do the hard work as I think yaqube has stated below.

yaqube wrote:

Dwyloc wrote:

Can the USB port on the add on board be used anything else as well as updating the firmware for the add on board?

Currently the USB port is not supported by the Minimig firmware. It could be used to turn the Minimig into an SD-Card reader or to communicate with host PC.

The Amiga/Minimig doesn't need to know it's using devices through a USB.

[mahen]

Here are a few games I didn't manage to get working with the current core (PAL, kick1.3, 512Kb or 1Mb of chip, no fast). It may be due to the ADF versions (but I usually tried several for each game).

- Mega Typhoon : black screen
- Captain Blood : guru meditation
- Lionheart : white screen (or black, not sure
- Wizkid 2 : empty menu, can't start the game ?
- Wiz'n'Liz : black screen
- Metal Masters : controls issue (not the right directions triggered)
Edit : actually works with English versions of the game (tried French initially - Maupiti Island : never got to the title screen. The Minimig LED keeps on flickering (but not the keyboard LED)
- Jim Power : works but parallax scrollings flicker on the shoot them up level (after the first boss)
Edit : works with a different version - Worms (Fairlight version) : black screen
- Kid Chaos : some tokens/bonuses tend to flicker a bit when scrolling quickly, but this may be a normal behaviour. The scrollings are perfect and the game 100% playable.

Apart from that, most games work perfectly. Demos generally work with minor gfx bugs.

Thanks for reading this

Edit : oh, also, the competition pro pad behaves really strangely. (depending on the game)

[BraindeaD]

Hi all.
@mahem

Worms and Lionheart works for me with PAL core, KS1.3 and 1Mg/512 memory settings.

Regards

[TheDaddy]

They work for me too...as I have said before, you might want to try different adf images of a game that doesn't work :-)

[Belial6]

That is exactly what I have been suggesting except using an Ethernet connection.  Both would be dandy, but there are some features that Ethernet could support that USB cannot.  Of course, in theory, I suppose that you could run an Ethernet USB device.

[yaqube]

Darrin wrote:
...
5.  Solve the bug that breaks Menace (well, it is my favourite shoot-em-up).  :-D

I have found and fixed a bug in the playfield collision detection circuit. Now Menace works correctly. I think those few games in which you died immediately after start should also work now correctly. Nevertheless they need to be tested.