Portable Amiga anyone??

[Drummerboy]

Hi , I new here (first post) so hi to everyone.

I am considering developing a small compact and cheap portable amiga.
I Design PCBs for a living.
Imagine minimig crossed with a PSP.

Specs
------
32MB SDRAM
1.6M gate Spartan 3E FPGA
4.3" Touchscreen LCD
Joystick
Joypad
buttons (start, menu, reset)
ARM 7 MPU with support for FAT 16/32 using a fast 8 bit bus between the fpga and arm, USB mass storage for SDCARD.
Dataflash for storing the roms.
PSP/iphone Battery
TV out
Headphone/speakers
Volume control
Li-po Charger
The 68000 CPU will be integrated into the fpga.

It will also be able to run other IP cores as well, like pacman,defender, vic20, atari st etc...

I am quite happy to design the hardware and draw the PCB, but need some help with porting the HDL over, can you help..

Is anyone interested in such a device or is it just another waste of time???

Great!..  

Go ahead!..  

I am possible constumer!. and defenitly the price might be the right.

i  think too more power than 68000, a  Wifi are needed, and other things like USB Conector.. you know the Portable Amiga will have contemporary or seeing to the future hardware.

Anyway, are cool idea and project, i hope you can materialize this project.  

I be happy for giving any opinion about from my humble position!

Best  Regards!

[jkonstan]

The original Amiga had Chip RAM & Fast RAM where CPU could access Fast RAM alone and CPU & custom chipset could access the Chip RAM. The current MiniMIG core consumes a fair amount of memory bandwidth using a single external memory bus architecture (SRAM x16); however, DDR should work fine for this design. SDRAM has been used as well on DE1/DE2; however, you should consider running SDRAM at 133Mhz with CAS2 access. You do not want to build such a nice platform and run out of memory bandwidth when MiniMIG core is enhanced (AGA graphics, USB, Ethernet, etc ....).

Yes i agree with the psp lcd, its a nice size and cheap...
With the ram, i would need more info, let me explain, we could put a lump of DDR2 on the board no problem, but would it matter?
Lets say the fpga is running at 100mhz the slow SDRAM is faster than that so would 333MHz DDR make much difference? even if we had a 68020 running at 50mhz........
 Need input....
As for the ports i was considering a hdmi port for the VGA as you can buy or make a hdmi to vga cable, the reason is the size of the connector. You could also get comp video and svideo out of the same connector, maybe???
I was also thinking of using the mini sd card (as used in phones etc) again because of the size.
And another port(type unkown) which puts out the rs232, jtag for the arm and fpga, that would be expanded on a small breakout board, used only for developing.
The arm chip i have in mind is the LPC2388, this little bute has 96k sram, 512k flash, USB host, device, OTG, ethernet(maybe we can find a wifi chip for it) is low power and only requires a 3.3v supply, and its cheap....

[amigadave]

Welcome to the forums here Picman.  As others have written, it is great to have enthusiastic new members here.  

I love the idea you have put forward and sincerely believe that it can be done.  Your estimate for total cost may be a little low at the end of the day, but as we have seen with the original MiniMig's success (it has been produced and sold commercially in small quantities), if done right and a quality product can result from the idea and work, it will sell.  

Making it portable with it's own display and battery power will be a big step forward from the MiniMig's design, which I always said was just the beginning of better things to come in the future.  There is a member here that did a case design for the MiniMig that turned out well (even if it was a bit pricey) and I am sure he would be interested in working on a case design for your portable device.  Using mass produced parts is the smartest thing to do, so if the entire design could be made to fit into an already existing case and display device, such as the PSP, or some other small hand-held gaming, music, or large cell phone, a new case would not have to be designed.  That of course would only work if replacement cases and displays could be obtained at a reasonable cost.  But it would make sense to me that replacement cases and display LCDs would most likely be much cheaper to obtain than a new case design for an existing LCD display.

Also, do we really need touchscreen capability?  On such a small screen it might not be practical to implement and/or use.  Personally I would like to see the form factor a bit larger than the PSP or iPhone/iPodTouch, but that is just my preference and I am not the typical small form factor game player, so don't listen to me.

[Linde]

In my opinion it's better to go for a sort of laptop, since the lack of keyboard on these handheld machines make them pretty useless for general computing.

[picman]

In my opinion it's better to go for a sort of laptop, since the lack of keyboard on these handheld machines make them pretty useless for general computing.

Thats the idea of the touchscreen.
The unit is only ment to play games and not write applications etc, so only a minimal keyboard is needed like the iphone...

[Fingers]

Thats the idea of the touchscreen.
The unit is only ment to play games and not write applications etc, so only a minimal keyboard is needed like the iphone...

But Pandora is already available for order...so why bother starting now?

PZ.

[Fats]

Hi , I new here (first post) so hi to everyone.

I am considering developing a small compact and cheap portable amiga.
I Design PCBs for a living.
Imagine minimig crossed with a PSP.

Did you already try to contact MikeJ from FPGAArcade? He claims to have a HDL '030 core. I think cooperating with him could save some work.

greets,
Staf.

[picman]

Did you already try to contact MikeJ from FPGAArcade? He claims to have a HDL '030 core. I think cooperating with him could save some work.

greets,
Staf.

I have mailed him, but no response yet...

[picman]

But Pandora is already available for order...so why bother starting now?

PZ.

Why bother indeed, this is what i am asking? Is it worth the hastle.
Pandora is expensive, and not the same beast.
Its a 600mhz arm with hardware 3d gfx etc, bit over kill to emulate an amiga..

[tone007]

bit over kill to emulate an amiga..

Right, but it can do a whole lot more than emulate an Amiga, which opens it to a much wider market.

If you aren't looking to get rich and have some free time, sure, a dedicated portable Amiga emulator could be fun for a few people.  I'd stop short of investing a bunch of money in the idea, though.

[mitchd61]

Using mass produced parts is the smartest thing to do, so if the entire design could be made to fit into an already existing case and display device, such as the PSP, or some other small hand-held gaming, music, or large cell phone, a new case would not have to be designed. That of course would only work if replacement cases and displays could be obtained at a reasonable cost. But it would make sense to me that replacement cases and display LCDs would most likely be much cheaper to obtain than a new case design for an existing .

As much as I would love to work on a case design, I have to agree with using mass produced parts to keep costs minimal. I'm pretty fired up about the whole concept though and a distinctively Amiga replacement case is something I'd still like to explore. Even if only for my own personal use.

[picman]

As much as I would love to work on a case design, I have to agree with using mass produced parts to keep costs minimal. I'm pretty fired up about the whole concept though and a distinctively Amiga replacement case is something I'd still like to explore. Even if only for my own personal use.

So how about using the PSP case?
It has a large capacity battery, the correct size screen, analog joystick, dpad..

Slight mod for an sd card... there are lots of faulty ones on ebay for cheap...

[ElPolloDiabl]

Bring back the Walker...   :roflmao:

You should base it around a 68030 that was totally compatible with 68000, plus you can play more cpu intensive games e.g. 3D FPS.

What are your qualifications? I did 2 years of Electronic technician certificate, but there was no design subjects. If I did the diploma course you got to build a Z80 computer.

Considering all the cheap and nasty downloadable games you can get... If you can build the hardware someone will get around updated all the classic games.

[picman]

Right, but it can do a whole lot more than emulate an Amiga, which opens it to a much wider market.

If you aren't looking to get rich and have some free time, sure, a dedicated portable Amiga emulator could be fun for a few people.  I'd stop short of investing a bunch of money in the idea, though.

Don't get me wrong, i agree with you, its not about making money though, its about keeping the amiga alive in other forms so we can continue to enjoy it.
I won't be investing loads of money into it, maybe a little time an effort but it could be worth it.
If it did make it off the ground people interested would have to pre order to raise the money to make the units. I think its the fairest way of doing things so no one person has to foot the bill. Also it gives you a good idea on how many units you need to produce, and over production is unliky.

[picman]

Bring back the Walker...   :roflmao:

You should base it around a 68030 that was totally compatible with 68000, plus you can play more cpu intensive games e.g. 3D FPS.

What are your qualifications? I did 2 years of Electronic technician certificate, but there was no design subjects. If I did the diploma course you got to build a Z80 computer.

Considering all the cheap and nasty downloadable games you can get... If you can build the hardware someone will get around updated all the classic games.

I have a Bachelors degree in Electronic Engineering, and have done IPC Advanced Designer Certification last year.
I am used to laying out complex boards of many layers but it could be a challenge to use only 4 (to keep the pcb cheap) It needs to be 4 because of using the bga fpga, 6-8 would be better. But because we wont be using all the pins on the fpga we might get away with 4....
I use Altium Winter 09 for capture and layout.

[mikej]

I have mailed him, but no response yet...

Hi Picman,
I got your email, but I haven't had a chance to reply yet.
If you look on http://www.fpgaarcade.com and scroll down a bit you will see the hi-res touch LCD daughter board for the Replay board, which is a prototype for a portable machine.

Work is progressing on a 68030 core well, this will be released with a new Amiga core for the Replay board as soon as possible.

I design ASICs / boards for a living and have to say doing it on 4 layers is almost impossible to do while keeping good power and ground planes needed for good signal integrity, really important for the high speed video and memory busses. You could do it if you go to 4 thou traces but then the PCB cost goes higher than a cheap 6 layer board. I use Mentor PCB tools for the design.

Designing the PCB is by far the easiest bit of the work. There is a lot of software design in in the embedded controller and design work in the video and memory subsystems. It looks like not much has happened since I got the first board back in the summer, but it's been a long slog to get the rest of the system written.

The other big headache is to get these boards produced at a good price you have to buy in bulk and from the suppliers directly. I am lucky enough to go to China a lot, so I have been talking and buying a lot of components in Shenzhen. I have quite a collection of bits now

So, I think it is great if you want to work on this, but don't underestimate the amount of work it takes to get it up and running.

I'll mail you privately as well.
Best,
Mike