MiniMig with AGA

[mongo]

Still on track, great!

Sooo, the Spartan 3 FPGA are discontinued I see. Did that make them cheaper? There will be a limited quantity? Would it be easy to move on to a newer kit board if need be?

Oh I'm sucha a worry wart...:lol:

Only the XC3S50 is discontinued.

[Crom00]

Only the XC3S50 is discontinued.

For those that were interested inthe CRAIG monitor:
15.6 inch Model # clc501
dc 12.v 3a power supply max36w power consumption

It's a NTSC HDTV tv too... requires aerial ant.

[RMK305]

I would be currious to know what the majority of these FPGA Arcade systems will be used for. I'm starting to wonder if the Amiga comunity will be purchasing the majority of them.

[kolla]

I'm starting to wonder if the Amiga comunity will be purchasing the majority of them.

Hardly a problem though, is it? :lol:

[JimS]

I would be currious to know what the majority of these FPGA Arcade systems will be used for. I'm starting to wonder if the Amiga comunity will be purchasing the majority of them.

I've been wanting to learn FPGA programming... at least to the "goofing around with it" level. The FPGA arcade board seems to me a good choice, being optimized to be an Amiga as well as other systems from that era.

[NovaCoder]

Where are these guides?

[off-topic]
guide
[/off-topic]

Can't wait to see this thing in Action, I hope it will grow to eventually replace the need for real hardware and offer a nice alternative to emulation.

[freqmax]

Regarding A1200 keyboard use. It's likely easy to replicate the A1200-MPU-input interface in FPGA, or in a MCU like ATtiny..

[mikej]

The FPGA is a Spartan3E - these are still available.
Connecting a A1200 keyboard would no problem.

Most interest in the board is actually from the arcade game community where it is used as a multigame JAMMA card - or with the vector output board as a multi-vector game which hasn't been done before, to my knowledge.
/Mike

[freqmax]

How is the longterm availability of the Spartan-3E PQ208 chips..?
Any suitable replacement in terms of price/capacity and non-BGA  package?

What is the pinout of A1200 keyboard before going into that MPU?

[mikej]

BGA packages are far better electrically, and they are actually easier to assemble than fine pitch QFPs. The next generation board, if I do one, will be Spartan6 and DDR2/3.

I haven't got the Amiga data with me, but if I remember correctly the keyboard is 5V, gnd and serial clock/data - so you can probably wire it up to the PS2 connector and modify the interface block which handles mouse/kb to also handle the Amiga protocol.
/Mike

[tasmanian guy]

Even though my Amiga 1200 with 68030 (with 64 meg ram) in a rack is going great, just wondering what speed this system is going to be running at?
 
eg would it be as fast as a 68030 50mhz or even faster?

[yaqube]

I haven't got the Amiga data with me, but if I remember correctly the keyboard is 5V, gnd and serial clock/data - so you can probably wire it up to the PS2 connector and modify the interface block which handles mouse/kb to also handle the Amiga protocol.

In case of any A600 or A1200 the keyboard is connected with a flat cable to the MCU on the mainboard. These keyboards are totally passive (simple switch matrix) but require a lot of I/O lines to handle.

[mikej]

ah yes, I was thinking of the ST keyboard which has the MCU on the keyboard.

There are 30 odd IOs to the Amiga Keyboard, so you would need to wire it up to the main expansion connector if you wanted to do this.
/Mike

[Darrin]

ah yes, I was thinking of the ST keyboard which has the MCU on the keyboard.

There are 30 odd IOs to the Amiga Keyboard, so you would need to wire it up to the main expansion connector if you wanted to do this.
/Mike

So in reality, the only way we could expect to use the A1200 or A600 keyboards is if someone makes a piece of hardware to accept the keyboard ribbon and does all of the work to adapt it to a PS2 connector.

Were "big box" Amiga keyboards just as simple, or would it be easier to produce a PS2 adapter for the A1000/2000/3000/4000 keyboards?

[freqmax]

Just put a ATmega or any other MCU that has enought GPIO pins connected to the keyboard and it can do both keyboard matrix decoding and PS/2 communication.

Hint: This is a not a problem, 32-bit 68020 core + DDR2 handling is

[ferrellsl]

Sheesh, just get a modern PS2 or USB keyboard with PS2 connector and remap the keys for an Amiga.  Amigans have a way of over complicating the hell out of everything.