Should minimig my family room?

[TheGoose]

Hi been thinking....

If I want to collect / play some old OCS games on the LCD / TV in the family room, without a bunch of old gear and fuss, Minimig the way to go?

I have a VGA port on my TV I believe.

Why the hell does the Minimig not have a s-video out? This is supposed to be for retro gaming on your new LCD TV then why this got left off I don't get (not all TVs have a VGA in).

Does it work with old Atari/Commodore controllers or new kinds?

[broken]

Does your TV support PAL video?

I am guessing it probably doesn't so it doesn't really matter all that much considering I believe the default core setup is for PAL video output on the Minimig.


Its a bum deal for us NTSC folks for sure.


But, if your TV has vga input it might work with the Minimig if it can handle a 50 Hz signal.

[TheGoose]

Oh no. I'm in NTSC land. Well, VGA looks to be my best option. Another thing I was never clear about: How do I get stuff to the MM ? Sneaker net with the SD card and a PC?

Thanks.

[whiteb]

I use a SD reader/writer built in to my laptop.

Wireless it over to the Laptop, dump to MMC.

[ajlwalker]

s-video is pretty rare in Europe.  It has only really started making an appearance with all the flat screem TVs.

Since Dennis is Dutch, it probably never occurred to him.

[tribz]

ajlwalker wrote:
s-video is pretty rare in Europe.  It has only really started making an appearance with all the flat screem TVs.

Since Dennis is Dutch, it probably never occurred to him.

I had s-video on my uk cd32 which was a bit before flat panels.

Rgrds
tribz

[persia]

There's no such thing as a LCD TV that is only NTSC.  They don't exist.  The only difference between a PAL TV bound for Australia and a NTSC TV bound for the USA is the tuner and the electric plug.  The TV will handle PAL or NTSC coming in from an RGB source wether it is PAL or NTSC...

[Damion]

@persia

Unfortunately, that's not always the case, as retarded as it sounds. I've had two that wouldn't handle 50Hz RGB, a Samsung 171MP, the other was a Sharp Aquos (can't recall the model #). The PAL market variants of the 171MP did handle 50Hz RGB no problem. :/ Really bummed me out at the time, as I figured there shouldn't have been any difference between them. Looking at the repair docs, I recall there being some significant change with the circuitry on the NTSC 171MP.

[persia]

I wonder if HD might have had some effect on the multisystem abilities of NTSC TVs?  I admit I haven't been to the States in a few years and all the TVs I tried when I was there were non-HD models....

[TheGoose]

That helps. Is still sketchy about NTSC though. I would love to support / buy this hardware and effort but think I'm gonna wait some. The board has sold well, yes? I mean, they are on a second production batch now, I think.

One other thing, I was at the site today, reading up. Does it do ECS games, really?

"The original Amiga chipset (OCS and ECS) is re-implemented in FPGA."

Is that new? When I 1st looked at this when it came out, I don't remember it saying that - probably just sloppy me.

Otherwise, you guys like it (who have it)?

[pan1k]

I love my Minimig. I can't wait till I get a TV with a VGA input!!!!!!!

[Fingers]

Erm, why the hell are people going on about PAL/NTSC?

Yaqube has released updated PAL AND NTSC cores :-)

PZ.

[Darrin]

Fingers wrote:
Erm, why the hell are people going on about PAL/NTSC?

Yaqube has released updated PAL AND NTSC cores :-)

PZ.

Exactly.  PAL and NTSC cores have been around for almost as long as the mass produced Minimig itself.

If your TV will support the PAL signal then use the PAL core, otherwise use the NTSC core.  Most games are NTSC anyway.

As for the controllers, if the joystick worked on your VIC-20, C-64 or Amiga then it will work on the Minimig.  I like the fact that you can use a PS2 mouse and thus leave 2 joysticks connected to the ports without having to fanny around swapping them (A real Amiga Mouse will work in place of the PS2 mouse... but why bother?).

I've posted pics of my Minimig here before.  Currently it is connected to a 42" Panasonic plasma TV (which is fricking awsome for playing Elite!).  I built the board into a PS2 PC Keyboard and  moving it simply means taking the 2 joysticks, the mouse and the PSU, wrapping them around the keyboard and carrying them to the new location.  A hell of a lot easier than lugging my old A2000 around back in the 80s.  :-D

[Illuwatar]

My version of the MiniMig do have the requested S-Video (and C-video). It uses a AD724 converter chip hooked up to the VGA port (it runs only in 15kHz RGB mode). A crystal controls the frequency of it (PAL or NTSC).