Minimig Discussion Forum

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http://www.illuwatar.se/project_pages/m ... inimig.htm

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Another pic:



It's a great idea to add composite and S-video output for those who might want to use it on older TVs.

I have this board. It is awesome. Quality is really good and i like that it has s-video/composite video out natively aswell as 10nS RAM chips. Now, all I need to do is to wait for Yaqube to release his new firmware which has Illuwatars svideo/composite parts included so that I can use svideo out to my TV instead os having to use VGA

I guess that if I use composite video out and into my LCD TV downstairs, the image will be slightly fuzzy, giving the image a good retro look instead of the ultrasharp VGA image which I dislike a little as graphics doesn´t bland as I like it

I can not wait to see more cores for this board. Fingers crossed for a nice C64 core which has SD card support and all that. Even a IEC connector would be awesome, but not quite needed I guess.


Regs
Espen

I received this board today. I haven't tried it yet, still waiting for new computer parts, but the build quality is really really good. I like the audio/video connectors on this board. It will make it a lot easier to hook it up .

Hopefully soon I can start playing with it .

Hi all,

I'm new to the Minimig and had some questions. Is this version of the Minimig the most current? Where can I buy a complete system? Case, US power supply, memory, etc, etc. Also I was wondering, please don't get angry at this question, if there was any reason to get the Minimig - other than the coolness factor, if you already own an original A500? Thanks for you patience.

Ed

This version 2.0 is a new pcb design with additional components like S-Video/FBAS, extended power supply voltage range, FPGA video decoupling etc.
Basically it is the same Minimig system as the Rev. 1.1 designed by Dennis van Weeren and manufactured by ACube or selfmade.

If you want to by some Minimig, its up to you which hardware platform it should be.
The ACube model is more available (as far as I can tell) and works out very fine. This one here will also work out fine but I guess you have to assemble it by yourself.

The most current Minimig still is the Rev 1.1, combined with the ARM controller (its also working on Rev 2.0) the Minimig is at the top of development state.

The reason for any Minimig against a real Amiga(500) would be:
Its a new kind of hardware with new options to add inside the chipset. Best example would be its selectable scandoubler and a real switchable ECS/OCS chipset behaviour. Also internal 2/4 floppy drive and HDD support without additional Hardware arround the machine. Last but not least any Kickstart "rom" can be used in this design without swapping any real rom chip or switching hardware. No real Amiga 500(+) can provide this out of the box.
Also the chipset is totally open and able to alter in any way. The Minimig board will additional be more then "an Amiga" to its user. There already is alternative FPGA core available (VIC20), to let this FPGA board run different hardware platform.
Unfortunately real the hardware is getting old and could fail in time. New parts will get rare and sometimes is hard to replace. In FPGA world the actually hardware is not that important because is only a host for the IP-Core (FPGA content file). If the Minimig board die, it will not harm that much as some real Amiga Agnus or CIA chip dies.
Also an FPGA board is very small, less power consume then the org. hardware and mostly more easy to transport. Additional it is based on modern input/output hardware like ps/2 keyboard + mouse, VGA screen etc.

In short term: Minimig is the future of Amiga. It will grow on

I'm very happy with my minimig 1.1 , I just wish this forum was more active
There must be many minimig 1.1 owners, I don't understand why there isn't more people posting
threads about it?

Right now there seems to be not much to report.
If there is something, Im also happy to read or even post something about it.

One very good reason (in addition to my fellows` quotes above) is that you can use proper Amiga joysticks on thousands of game roms which may have deteriorated on original disk

I myself have 3 Amigas and hundreds of disks, But quite a few of those disks just are full of errors now Minimig is in my opinion THE fpga to own.

Also Minimig is able to work on most LCD screen. Real Amiga scandoubler/flickerfixer mostly dont work on those modern screen due to a non-digital display signal stream. The modern FPGA technology is able to generate very accurate signal stream for a sharp display image.

Anyway real Amiga hardware is getting old and may fail in time. A modern FPGA board is just a host for the soft-core Amiga chipset and can be replaced more easy then any real Amiga hardware ever.