To Minimig or not to Minimig?

[whiteb]

Very expensive winner. When you add the cost of the MiniMig, some sort of case (even if it is just two bits of plexiglass), the ARM upgrade, the RAM upgrade you are talking mega money compared with an A600 + HD

Add to that the fact that MiniMig is not 100% compatible with all Amiga software (yet). Core updates have slowed to nothing also.

Hardly, a new core was released a few days ago (to Owners of ARM board as a Pre-Release), it is about to hit the Intehweb shortly. (ARM owners cannot Release it either, Its coded Only to ARM for the moment), and Yes I have an ARM board.

[whiteb]

Thanks everyone for your replies.  I forgot that 3.9 needs an 020 so that's out but my main hope was that I could use my ewxtensive collection of WHDLoad games on it so WB3.1 will be fine but it looks like from what WHITEB was saying that I need to get a 4mb RAM mod.  Is this just a standard old style EDO RAM?  

Thanks again all!

Skilgannon

No, The Ram 'Mod', means you have to get another two Surface mount chips, and solder them on top of the OLD ones (Piggy Back), with one special pin left sticking out, and wired to the Spare I/O (Chip Select pin).

Turns 2MB, in to 4MB.  And additionally, you *NEED* the ARM board for it to work, Along with 28Mhz Overclock.  ARM Board also means *FOUR* Floppy Drives Support (instead of 2), Hard File (Hard Drive Image) support, SDHC (Fat32, Long file names) 4+GB SD Card Support.

I am using a 4GB SDHC, with a 3GB Hard File (Partitioned to 1GB, 1GB, 1GB unformatted).

[skilgannon]

LOL - I'm floating back to the idea of the MiniMig.  WhiteB, what do you think the cost would be to get the Minimig, casing, Ram and ARM upgrades?  I'm guessing around £300?  It's not really about the cash for me, just want to try and get an Amiga that will work the way I want it to (play WHDLoad games and on a monitor that would also be small enough to sit on the end of my desk).  I guess an A3000 is an option if I could ever see one for sale as that could live under my monitor

[tone007]

Whew, £300?  I've got a nice 3000 with 8mb of RAM you could have for that.

edit: actually, make that 10mb.  Forgot about the chipram.

[skilgannon]

Hehe - thanks Tone, but if it was a 3000 I was going for the most I would pay would be around £150 as that seems to be the going rate on eBay but I guess depending on condition etc £200 would be my limit.  Do you know if the 3000 can work on LCD monitors?

LOL - just realised that so far I've gone from teh Minimig, to an a600, back to the minimig and am now talking about an A3000!  I'm not normally this flighty

I think that if the Minimig did everything I wanted it to do then I would have snapped it up but I'm thinking that the work to get it to be in the position I would want it to be in would be extensive (and the soldering might be prohibative - I'm rubbish at soldering!).

[whiteb]

LOL - I'm floating back to the idea of the MiniMig.  WhiteB, what do you think the cost would be to get the Minimig, casing, Ram and ARM upgrades?  I'm guessing around £300?  It's not really about the cash for me, just want to try and get an Amiga that will work the way I want it to (play WHDLoad games and on a monitor that would also be small enough to sit on the end of my desk).  I guess an A3000 is an option if I could ever see one for sale as that could live under my monitor

Well, the choice is Entirely up to you, I cannot make that decision.

Yes, it is a fair lump of cash to shell out, and a REAL Amiga can work out cheaper, (FPGA is a Fair chunk of the price)

Minimig (Amigakit) GBP. 139
ARM Micro (Pic Replacement) Euro. 45

Amigakit has the Power supply for 7 quid, but if you can find a Regulated output 5v @ 1amp (to be safe) for less, you are laughing. (Tip Positive).

Ram Mod, well that is gonna break your Warranty with Amigakit, but 2MB of ram (1.5 Usable, 512k for kickstart) is good enough for Any ADF game you will throw at it.

The extra Ram is for those extra Ram using WHDLoad installers.

So for 180 quid you will have a fairly advanced Minimig, just only 2MB of ram, but it WILL boot Workbench 3.1 (mine does).  Feel confident with a fine tip Soldering Iron ?

[tone007]

3000s work fine on LCDs in my experience.  edit: though I admit I haven't done much in 50hz modes on an LCD..

Minimig seems like a decent solution (price notwithstanding) if you're only using actual disk images of games that run on a standard 500.  I think WHDLoad would add just enough trouble to make it disappointing, at least those are the kind of results I've seen WHDloading on 68000 machines.

[skilgannon]

Think I'll need to park the Minimig idea for now  It will as you say be ultimately disappointing unless I could do the grand job that WhiteB has managed.  

If you're serious about your A3000 Tone then let me know and we can maybe chat off line.  Does it have 3.1 Roms?

[tone007]

This 3000 is pretty much straight from the factory, still with the 2.0 ROMs.

Biggest issue though would probably be that I'm in the US and you'd need a voltage converter to use it.

[amigadave]

Thanks Tone but it's really the form factor I was after as I only recently got rid of my A1200 setup (was a nice setup too as it was accellerated and had 32mb ram and I also had it networked).  Because my Amiga monitor (Microvitec Multisync) died and I couldnt find another one (on eBay or anywhere else) I ended up not using it any more, so sold it.  The thought of a nice small form factor machine to be able to play my favourite games on the actual machine is a nice one but I'm stuck with the monitor issue again, as none of my TV's (All LCD) will run with it so I would need to again try and find one or get the old Philips MK2 style (which is really just a CRT tv).

Sounds like you should just replace the A1200 just like the one you used to have and add an IndivisionAGA for the A1200 to it to solve the monitor/LCD problem.  The Indivision is a great piece of hardware and a great addition to any A1200 that is not already in a tower with a Zorro board and graphics card.

[cv643d]

Indivision and HighGFX 1024x768 in combination with 060 is a great setup, although chip-mem runs a bit low it is very usable and nice experience, perfect for 8 color MWB workbench.

[tone007]

Indivision and HighGFX 1024x768 in combination with 060 is a great setup, although chip-mem runs a bit low it is very usable and nice experience, perfect for 8 color MWB workbench.

I'm pushing mine to the limit I guess, 32 color 1024x768 with FBlit running to cushion the hit on chipmem.  I generally have over 1MB chip free, and web browsing with iBrowse is pretty usable.  I've tried 256 color in the past (without FBlit) and it was pretty slow.

[Fats]

Think I'll need to park the Minimig idea for now  It will as you say be ultimately disappointing unless I could do the grand job that WhiteB has managed.  

You'll have to wait till the Replay is finished. The maker is talking about it in a thread on amiga.org. He claims to have a cycle exact 68030 core.

greets,
Staf.

[Hattig]

Is anyone making a MiniMig with built-in ARM controller and 4MB?

There's also FPGAArcade, which looks promising.

NatAmi looks like it's some time away. Just been reading their website, and it looks like they've got some neat ideas and they're making solid progress in some places, but why they're doing a 3D engine right now is beyond me. The SIMD coprocessor is a nice idea though. The 68EC050 they've nearly finished is also looking quite potent.

[whiteb]

Is anyone making a MiniMig with built-in ARM controller and 4MB?

My Minimig just needs the 4MB hack right now.

[tonyyeb]

Minimig is tempting but I think I'm going to wait for the FPGAarcade.