Portable Amiga anyone??

[tone007]

Selling 100 units of a £100-£120 product that requires some technical skills and further equipment (PSPs aren't quite lining the streets as far as I know) to turn into a working device does sound a bit on the optimistic side to me.  For that kind of money, I'd want a fully working, guaranteed device with no effort on my part.  GP2X is only slightly more expensive, apparently, if they're still available.  Isn't the Pandora supposed to be in the £200 range, and far more capable?

[SamuraiCrow]

@tone007

I think he would need to contact the Natami team if he wants to produce a more capable system than the MiniMig.  The Minimig is only A500 compatible with only a few add-ons such as the processor core in the FPGA.

@PicMan

I like the idea of a portable device but you've left out the price of the screen in your price estimates.

[picman]

@tone007

I think he would need to contact the Natami team if he wants to produce a more capable system than the MiniMig.  The Minimig is only A500 compatible with only a few add-ons such as the processor core in the FPGA.

@PicMan

I like the idea of a portable device but you've left out the price of the screen in your price estimates.

The screen should come with the dona PSP, if not they are around £20.
There are loads of faulty psp on ebay with power faults, udm not reading faults or other faults but have an intact screen. Recycling is good.

I have bought 2 today for less than £44 all in.

This is a project, it won't be for everyone, you will need some skill to assemble it, if you can change a screen in a psp, the you will be able to fit a new board, but it will be fun, and thats what life is about.

Its also not all about the minimig, thats only part of it, because its a large fpga, a lot of other computers/video games machines can be implemented.

[picman]

Selling 100 units of a £100-£120 product that requires some technical skills and further equipment (PSPs aren't quite lining the streets as far as I know) to turn into a working device does sound a bit on the optimistic side to me.  For that kind of money, I'd want a fully working, guaranteed device with no effort on my part.  GP2X is only slightly more expensive, apparently, if they're still available.  Isn't the Pandora supposed to be in the £200 range, and far more capable?

So its not for you, fine. Buy a gp2x, and run the amiga emulator very slowly, i have one here and its not good.
Pandora will be out in april or may (maybe) but all the ones produced are back orders unless you can get one of the canceled ones) The price still has not been fixed, and its still twice the price.

This is not ment to be a commercial product, just a bit of fun to keep the amiga (among others) alive in a different form,

[mitchd61]

This is a project, it won't be for everyone, you will need some skill to assemble it, if you can change a screen in a psp, the you will be able to fit a new board, but it will be fun, and thats what life is about.
 
Its also not all about the minimig, thats only part of it, because its a large fpga, a lot of other computers/video games machines can be implemented.

I for one don't mind a "some assembly required" type of project. That's part of the fun of this sort of thing. When you mention other computers/video games being implemented, what are some you have had in mind? It's an obscure machine, but a portable Atari Jaguar would be pretty unique and Sega CD as well.

[tone007]

Pandora will be out in april or may (maybe)

I like my vaporware in one piece!

[xyzzy]

What's wrong with this? (apart from the lack of case and core

http://www.fpgaarcade.com/common/replay_july_lcd_large.jpg

[mumule]

What's wrong with this? (apart from the lack of case and core
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/common/replay_july_lcd_large.jpg

Actually, it is a very nice system. What I don't like is the additional processor for boot & disk.
Prefer the version on the Altera de2 boards, where a processor build into the FPGA does the additional load. I think it is a much cleaner design.

[coldfish]

I think this is a great project.

I have a GP2X running the latest version UAE4all and its actually very good, many games are almost 100% with the right settings @ 240-280Mhz, some fussy games are less smooth.  Amiga/16bit generation in a handheld is extra fun over emulation on a PC.

Replacing the gubbins in a dead PSP seems like a good idea, you wont have to think about moulding/design and can hijack Sony's industrial design whilst recycling.

I'll probably get a 2nd batch pandora, but more options for portable Amiga fun is good, I hope this project makes to to completion.

[mikej]

Actually, it is a very nice system. What I don't like is the additional processor for boot & disk.
Prefer the version on the Altera de2 boards, where a processor build into the FPGA does the additional load. I think it is a much cleaner design.

I agree, but there are some downsides. You need to configure the FPGA from something initially. You can do this from a serial flash device and then use a processor core in the FPGA to bootstrap the system. The problem with this is that the firmware the core is using is also burned into the flash so it is not easy to bug fix it - not practical in a mass produced design.

The advantage of using the external ARM is it costs about the same as an external flash and it is much easier to re-load the firmware from the SD card should an update be needed. You can also recover easily (on the Replay board at least) from a bricked system using the USB port to re-flash the ARM.

Picman, one thing about your pricing. Don't forget the passive components - on the Replay board the power supplies, resistors, caps and connectors account for more than half the component cost...

/MikeJ

[mumule]

I agree, but there are some downsides. You need to configure the FPGA from something initially. You can do this from a serial flash device and then use a processor core in the FPGA to bootstrap the system. The problem with this is that the firmware the core is using is also burned into the flash so it is not easy to bug fix it - not practical in a mass produced design.
/MikeJ

Did you know about the multi-boot from spi on the spartans ?

First boot would be a "maintenance-mc68k" which checks the system, verifies the spi contents vs. the sd-flash boot file, and boots the second stage.
No need at all for an ARM ;-)
And, I know of people who use it in real production quantities.

But, I really agree, it is a matter of taste ;-)

Cheers

[mikej]

Mumule,
yes you are right, the SPI boot would be an option - but I want(ed) the option of moving to a spartan6/altera device in the future so didn't want to tie myself in to much.

There is a quite a bit of software in the ARM to boot up and run the OSD etc, and for things like hard disk support you want that running at the same time as the host processor.
I like the fact I can run this independently of whatever processor is running in the FPGA.

Cheers,
Mike

[mumule]

Mumule,
yes you are right, the SPI boot would be an option - but I want(ed) the option of moving to a spartan6/altera device in the future so didn't want to tie myself in to much.

Spartan6 supports it too.
But why would anybody move to altera !?!?
;-)

Just put in the spartan6 already on your board, saves you a lot of trouble changing it later anyway.

There is a quite a bit of software in the ARM to boot up and run the OSD etc, and for things like hard disk support you want that running at the same time as the host processor.
I like the fact I can run this independently of whatever processor is running in the FPGA.

As I said, it is a matter of taste ;-)

Cheers

[mikej]

"Just put in the spartan6 already on your board, saves you a lot of trouble changing it later anyway."

ha, tempting. I already changed from spartan3 to 3e, and if I start the change to spartan6 they will have brought out spartan7 before I finish the damn thing
/Mike

[mitchd61]

I have a GP2X running the latest version UAE4all and its actually very good, many games are almost 100% with the right settings @ 240-280Mhz, some fussy games are less smooth. Amiga/16bit generation in a handheld is extra fun over emulation on a PC.

How happy are you with the GP2X overall? I've been contemplating buying one. Mostly for the Amiga emulation, but a few other systems interest me as well. UAE on the PSP just doesn't seem to be smooth enough on a lot of the games, despite some tweeking of the settings.

[amigadave]

Well some of the main parts needed are:
from digikey Digikey:

FPGA Spartan 3e 1600 320BGA 122-1481-ND  £40.90 in 1's
64MB DDR Sdram 557-1212-1-ND £5.60
ARM7 LPC 2388 568-4323-ND £10.32

The PCB i think we can get for £10 (6 layer) ish if we buy 100 or more..
The FPGA would have to be mounted which would cost around £100 for 100 boards.

Then we have the psu parts and connectors so at a real guess i would say £120 ish for build 1, now this will come down quite a bit if we buy more than i part at a time, eg the arm7 is £7 in 25's...

So i would expect it to be around £100....

I would be interested in such a project.  Sounds like a good next step in the evolution of the MiniMig type projects.  Let me know when you are ready to order after the pcb design is finished and a prototype is tested and working.