@WoDK

looks very interesting hopefully they will release it soon, to much time was wasted in Amigaland.

@_Steve_

Ofcourse it will require a redesign, that was the entire point - d'uh!
The question is, will it also require a total redesign of the FPGA chipset code?

The rest of your arguments to why this can or should not be done is just nonsense.

* As you say kick1.3 supported harddrives, who cares if you could not afford it
* A500+ came with OS2 and ECS, as you know perfectly well
* A600 most often came with a kickstart that did not support its internal disk controller
* OS3.1 came for _all_ amigas, including A500, and OS3.1 runs just fine on MiniMig
* Not all of us are obsessed with games, some of us actually have other uses

So you're fine with the current MiniMig - then shut up and enjoy. Perhaps other people want to use the MimiMig as starting point to something more, who are you to say they cannot?

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@retro

I don't think anyone deliberately sets out to create vapourware. In general, they're actually trying to bring their projects to fruition, but sometimes ambition exceeds ability.

Why do they announce things before they're ready? To create a buzz, of course. If the product eventuates, this is a good thing. If it doesn't, well, it's vapourware ...

@LoneHaranguer

Thus they hopefully opensource it so others can pick up where they left off

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LoneHaranguer wrote: @retro I don't think anyone deliberately sets out to create vapourware. In general, they're actually trying to bring their projects to fruition, but sometimes ambition exceeds ability. ...

@ALL

New Pictures:
http://www.natami.net/pictures.htm

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Easy Pocket Money, Freelancers & Experts Online

MiniMig FPGA, Sam440 Flex 733Mhz PPC, Amiga OS 4.1 Update 2, MorphOS 2.4, Other - AmiKit + Cloanto Amiga Forever 2008 + E-UAE, AmigaSYS

@kolla

Quote:

Ofcourse it will require a redesign, that was the entire point - d'uh! The question is, will it also require a total redesign of the FPGA chipset code?

I wasn't going to reply to this as it is getting way O/T, but anyway, the original point was made about why there isn't AGA and 030 accelerators for the MiniMig. The simple answer is that it was never built for that (as I said). Yes things can be tweaked or amended, but the original MiniMig boards (including but no limited to those sold by Acube) are simply not designed to take anything more than a 68000 processor and to hold the original A500 chipset. The FPGA simply isn't big enough for much else.

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The rest of your arguments to why this can or should not be done is just nonsense. * As you say kick1.3 supported harddrives, who cares if you could not afford it * A500+ came with OS2 and ECS, as you know perfectly well * A600 most often came with a kickstart that did not support its internal disk controller * OS3.1 came for _all_ amigas, including A500, and OS3.1 runs just fine on MiniMig * Not all of us are obsessed with games, some of us actually have other uses

Nothing nonsensical about what I said at all.
Kick 1.3 supports harddrives - but since hardly any A500 owner has one, adding a HD to the minimig is really pointless (most of what you need can be done on the SD card which can be up to a reasonable 4GB in size anyway). You only need to add support for using the SD card more that just to load floppy images. Whether again there is room in either the FPGA or PIC is another thing entirely.

As for the price - I never said I couldn't afford it - I said it was very cost prohibitive, and you gained nothing from owning it as very little USED it. I could be really pedantic and make a poll asking how many A500 owners actually had a HD for their machine between 1986-1991, but let's be honest - what would be the point.

The A500+ is not the A500 (which I thought was pretty clear in itself). A500s were not sold with KS2.x or KS3.x - A500+ came with 2.X sure, but NO C= manufactured A500 ever sold with 3.x by default (unless the ROM was replaced by a dealer).

A600 again is not an A500, and like the 500+ came with KS2.x by default, but unlike the 500/500+ actually had a HD controller built into it.

And yes KS3.x was made and sold for pretty much every model, but only a few Amigas actually were manufactured by default with it (CD32, A1200 and A4000). And in any case, it wasn't what the MiniMig was created to run. The fact it does work is a testament to the original work Dennis put in to creating the MiniMig to fully clone the A500 OCS/ECS chipset.

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So you're fine with the current MiniMig - then shut up and enjoy. Perhaps other people want to use the MimiMig as starting point to something more, who are you to say they cannot?

I didn't say someone couldn't do with their MiniMig as they please. I simply said it wouldn't take the enhancements asked for as it stands right now without changing the entire design.

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@LoneHaranguer

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LoneHaranguer wrote: Why do they announce things before they're ready? To create a buzz, of course. If the product eventuates, this is a good thing. If it doesn't, well, it's vapourware ...

Actually in the case of the Natami the increased PR work was done partly to bring more people aboard the Natami team (which has proven to be a successful strategy).

@_Steve_

I think you're missing the point. The important part of the Minimig design is the HDL code working in the FPGA, not the board itself. The v1.1 revision board was meant to be a A500 clone yes, but that was never the intended end point, and there are other more powerful platforms that already run the Minimig HDL code, as well as the v1.1 board getting enhancements like the ARM-based add-on currently being worked on.

Last edited by HenryCase on 13-Apr-2009 at 01:08 AM.

@_Steve_

Quote:

_Steve_ wrote: @kolla Quote: Ofcourse it will require a redesign, that was the entire point - d'uh! The question is, will it also require a total redesign of the FPGA chipset code? I wasn't going to reply to this as it is getting way O/T, but anyway, the original point was made about why there isn't AGA and 030 accelerators for the MiniMig.

Ok, no disrespect, but no, your original point was that doing a MiniMig with a 68030 was pointless, since the MiniMig is only OCS/ECS, and the context was not accelerators, it was "MiniMig" as the projects buildt on Dennis work, not necessarily the current MiniMig 1.1 hardware:
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Quote: Arko wrote: The Minimig is the only project that exists in silicone. I'm concerned about the state of this project, it ist still nothing more than reduced a A500 Clone. There is still no AGA version and there is still no chance for a Minimig with 68030 and higher clock speeds.

Note - "no AGA version" and "a MiniMig with 68030..." nothing about accelerators.
To me at least, it is quite obvious that it's the MiniMig project that is topic here, not just the MiniMig made by aCube.
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The simple answer is that it was never built for that (as I said). Yes things can be tweaked or amended, but the original MiniMig boards (including but no limited to those sold by Acube) are simply not designed to take anything more than a 68000 processor and to hold the original A500 chipset. The FPGA simply isn't big enough for much else.

That's fine, but that also was not the topic - the topic was the various alternative "amiga hardware" projects, natami, A-clone and MiniMig, and their possible future incarnations.
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Quote: The rest of your arguments to why this can or should not be done is just nonsense. * As you say kick1.3 supported harddrives, who cares if you could not afford it * A500+ came with OS2 and ECS, as you know perfectly well * A600 most often came with a kickstart that did not support its internal disk controller * OS3.1 came for _all_ amigas, including A500, and OS3.1 runs just fine on MiniMig * Not all of us are obsessed with games, some of us actually have other uses Nothing nonsensical about what I said at all. Kick 1.3 supports harddrives - but since hardly any A500 owner has one, adding a HD to the minimig is really pointless (most of what you need can be done on the SD card which can be up to a reasonable 4GB in size anyway).

Guess what's the most wanted feature of current MiniMig - correct, harddrive emulation.
Where did anyone say they need an actual hard disk controller? I would guess most users would be shiny happy with hard disk images on SD(HC) card.

Using "hardly any A500 owner had one" as argument is really grasping for straws - first of all, plenty of A500 owners did have hard drive, and those who didnt certainly wanted it - but more importantly - almost all _MiniMig_ users _want it_!

For what it's worth, I know of more A500s with hard drives than without.
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You only need to add support for using the SD card more that just to load floppy images. Whether again there is room in either the FPGA or PIC is another thing entirely.

In the current MiniMig 1.1 hardware, there isn't, unless you do tricks like adding the ARM board to get more control of the SD. In other implementations (different hardware), this can be done directly from the start.
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As for the price - I never said I couldn't afford it - I said it was very cost prohibitive, and you gained nothing from owning it as very little USED it. I could be really pedantic and make a poll asking how many A500 owners actually had a HD for their machine between 1986-1991, but let's be honest - what would be the point.

I still dont grasp your "gained nothing ... very little USED it" - what are you on about? Amiga software that cannot be installed on hard drive? I suspect you only think games again... and there's no point in doing statistics on how many A500s that had hard drives attached, the point is how many _today_ that want it in a MiniMig implementation, and for that I'd bet the percentage is quite high.
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The A500+ is not the A500 (which I thought was pretty clear in itself). A500s were not sold with KS2.x or KS3.x - A500+ came with 2.X sure, but NO C= manufactured A500 ever sold with 3.x by default (unless the ROM was replaced by a dealer).

So the A500+ is not an A500+? And here I thought the A500+ was an updated A500 with ECS chips instead of OCS and with OS2.x instead of OS1.x.
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A600 again is not an A500, and like the 500+ came with KS2.x by default, but unlike the 500/500+ actually had a HD controller built into it.

Well, I can be equally pedantic and say that A600 is a completely different beast than A600HD.
Most A600 owners also never had hard drives installed, since their kickstarts didnt support it.
Quote:

And yes KS3.x was made and sold for pretty much every model, but only a few Amigas actually were manufactured by default with it (CD32, A1200 and A4000). And in any case, it wasn't what the MiniMig was created to run. The fact it does work is a testament to the original work Dennis put in to creating the MiniMig to fully clone the A500 OCS/ECS chipset.

Ofcourse, and that OS3.1, was aimed to also run on OCS/ECS. To say the MiniMig was not created to run OS3.1 is kind of backwards - the MiniMig was created to run whatever the A500 (or A500+) could run - _including_ OS3.1. I bet that having OS3.1 workbench and system conform programs running on MiniMig has not exactly been the biggest challange when developing the MiniMig, I suspect various games and demos post much bigger challanges in that regard.
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Quote: So you're fine with the current MiniMig - then shut up and enjoy. Perhaps other people want to use the MimiMig as starting point to something more, who are you to say they cannot? I didn't say someone couldn't do with their MiniMig as they please. I simply said it wouldn't take the enhancements asked for as it stands right now without changing the entire design.

And I question your oppinion that "the entire design" needs change, unless we speak of different things - if you consider Illuvator's MiniITX variant of MiniMig as a "an entirely different design", then yes, definetly. But I think more of what it involve of changes in the chipset simulation in the FPGA, and I suspect not so much would be needed for replacing 68000 with 68030.

And that really is the core question in this discussion, would be nice with an answer from someone who knows

Cheers, no hard feelings and all that

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In the early 1990s my Amiga 500 had a hard drive + 4 MB fastram.
So did many of my friends. I estimate about 30% of the A500 people I knew had hard drives. About 90% of my A2000 friends had a hard drive. Remember, an A2000 is just an A500 in a giant steel case with extra expansion slots. It plays all the same games and demos as an A500 since it has the exact same chipset and cpu.



@Steve
Try playing A500 games like Beneath a Steel Sky without a hard drive. Go on. I dare you.

A500 Wings was such a great game but it sucked IMHO from floppy. I loved playing it on my hard drive.



@Topic

NatAmi designer has stated that NatAmi will not come with SATA, just modern IDE. Not that garbage crap IDE in the A1200/A4000.

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Wanna try a wonderfull magical Amiga strategy game?
Total Chaos AGA

@ChaosLord

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@Steve Try playing A500 games like Beneath a Steel Sky without a hard drive. Go on. I dare you. A500 Wings was such a great game but it sucked IMHO from floppy. I loved playing it on my hard drive.

I owned Beneath A Steel Sky CD32 version, which has no need for a harddrive install. Also managed to play most other "multi" floppy games without too much irritation in the 500 without the need for a harddrive (Leisure Suit Larry for example). The last time I checked, Wings was only a dual floppy game, so hardly requiring HD installation.

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In opposit to Clone-A or Natami the Minimig is an open source project.

If Clone-A turns into an A500 compatible joystick with built in games and without any chance to install software on it, the Minimig could be a powerfull competitor.
If the Natami turns into a super high sophisticated high price board wit limited compatibillity, the Minimig will be a low price alternative.

Remeber the BoXer, the DCE A5000, A6000, the A\Box, the AmigaONE, the PegasosII, if something stupid happens to the Natami or Clone-A project, you will not get any support or further development. And as an oposite to it's competitors, the Minimig is already here.

The users could decide the direction of further developments by putting up bounties.

It is easy to add a 68020/68030 card with 8-32MB Fastram, there are plenty of free existing designs for cards that where plugged into the CPU socket. The FPGA could be changed to anable a direct an fast Chip Ram access, superior to everything that was build into the A3000.

AGA could be added with a differentr FPGA ( it will need different AD-Converters for video too ).

The Minimig could be more than a hardware ADF player. If there are bounties to improve it, i would pay.

- 68020/68030 28/48 8-32MB fastram
- better mass storage support for SD-Cards, support read / write on VFAT+FAT16, FAT32 and FFS formated cards.
- Ethernet / WLAN sana device.
- 1024 * 768 60Hz 8 bit chunky GFX mode for Minimig chipset with software support.
- AROS kickstart replacement for 68k

cu Arko
]

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AmigaONE. Haha. Just because you can put label on it does not make it Amiga.

I borrowed this comments from here (#27 & #28):
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38873&forum=2&start=20&order=0

@meet.mrnrg

I run with a true 68030 processor.

@Arko

The Natami team has stated several times that the project most likely is going to get open sourced if there are no investors interested.
If you want to help out the team is accepting contributors, thus it is an open project, in one way.

@_Steve_

OK then, what about Flight of the Amazon Queen or Biing!?
Oh wait, the latter was probably prohibited in the UK

No wonder you UK users couldnt afford disk drives, considering the prices of UK amiga mags

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@kolla

This is getting far off the original topic. Anyways, FOTAQ I do not recall exactly how many disks it came on without either looking at in my originals box (assuming I can lay my hands on it) or a quick search on HOL. However, to be honest I don't recall that game being too much of a problem either (I actually am replaying it via ScummVM on my DS at the moment).

The second game you mentioned I do not recall ever having seen in the UK. I'll pass over your dig at the disk drives as I assume you mean HD rather than floppy, seeing as I have 3 floppies connected to my Amiga anyway (one of which was the PowerXL drive). FWIW, magazines used to retail at anything from £2.99 to £6.99 depending on the media mounted on the front, and I was a regular subscriber to most of the available Amiga magazines at the time.

At one point my brother and I were subscribed to: The One, Zero, CU Amiga, Amiga Format, Amiga Shopper, Amiga Power, ZZap 64 (later ZZap 64/Amiga), Commodore User International, Amiga User International, CD32 Gamer, AmigActive possibly some others I have forgotten about.

Not to keep going over things, the simple fact was that HDs in the UK were not that big an issue when the A500 was available.

Yes they were incredibly expensive at the time (being in some cases more than 2x the cost of the computer in the first place), but since the machine was marketed as a gaming platform, and that nearly every game available used a custom disk loader negating any kind of HD install (and that goes for quite a few of the multiple disk games as well), a HD for the A500 was an unnecessary expense. I am sure like most people, users of non-games such as the infamous DPaint, would have simply had a stash of floppies to save their creations to having booted from the applications' disks.

It wasn't really until the A1200s were launched that a lot of the non big-box owners actually got hold of a HD and found a good use for it. Now obviously different territories had different popular machines and thus hardware available to them (if you haven't already read it, go get Over the Edge and read it as it illustrates that point quite well).

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