No Minimig2 mass production in sight?

( http://www.illuwatar.se/project_pages/minimig2/minimig.htm )

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- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
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// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

What can I do with minimig?

Does it have hardfile support? Can I use it as a amiga with hard drive? Do I need to choose hardfile everytime when I boot it?

Quote:

Does it have hardfile support? Can I use it as a Amiga with hard drive? Do I need to choose hardfile everytime when I boot it?

Think of the minimig as a modern replacement for an A500 or A600 its a great little ECS Amiga clone that lets you play games from adf images off an SD card with real Amiga Joysticks and a built in scan doubler.

Yes the minimig dose support hard files but you really need to get an ARM addon board to make hardfile access faster to make hard file support much use in my opinion.

And no you don't need to choose your settings each time the Minimig lets you save them.

Last edited by Dwyloc on 11-Aug-2010 at 12:07 AM.

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Sam440ep 667mhz, 512MB, 120GB 2.5" HD, OS4.1FE
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Amiga 1200, Blizzard 040/40 (BlizzardPPC 060/200 with SCSI removed at present), mediatorSX pci, Voodoo3, PCI network card os 3.9BB2
4MB Minimig with ARM addon boar

AmigaKIT should cooperate with Faranheit from NGI, I think he has some ARM boards.
It would really be better for AmigaKIT to sell this with the ARM board?

Last edited by Mr_DBUG on 11-Aug-2010 at 10:34 AM.

I would love to see the minimig shipping in (mini) ATX format and with some expansion slot + ARM controller/xcore controller for hard files etc.
Then it could be used as successor of A2000 (name: Ami2001 ?).
And with AGA suppport it could be Ami4001/Ami1201.

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- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

Quote:

It would really be better for AmigaKIT to sell this with the ARM board?

That all depends on if you want to play games from adf images using kickstart 1.3 with your minimig or if you want to use a whdload, kickstart 3.1 and a hard file to play games.

Both work well if you mainly play games on a lot of disks that don't support extra floppy drives then you probably want a 4MB Minimg and an ARM addon board for faster hardfile support so you can play games installed with whdload, If you mainly play games that dont need much or any disk swapping then the standard 2MB Minimig with out the ARM addon board will do you just fine.

I have 2 Minimigs a 2MB one without an arm board I keep at my girlfriends which is mainly used to play Lotus & lotus II, speed ball II and Pinball Dreams/Fantasies and a 4MB one with the arm addon board I use Civilazation and whdload installed games (mainly graphics adventures and rpgs) at my own place.

So I can say that both configs work well having the a 4MB Minimig and an arm board is more flexible, but also quite a lot more expensive, as such I would recommend that anyone getting a Minimig should get the 4MB version that way if want to add the ARM addon board and play whdload installed games all they need to do is swap out the pic for the arm board (the basic 2MB board is a bit short on ram to play most harddisk installed games as you only have 1.5MB of ram after kickstart is loaded).

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Sam440ep 667mhz, 512MB, 120GB 2.5" HD, OS4.1FE
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Amiga 1200, Blizzard 040/40 (BlizzardPPC 060/200 with SCSI removed at present), mediatorSX pci, Voodoo3, PCI network card os 3.9BB2
4MB Minimig with ARM addon boar

How slow it is with hardfiles? Slower that original a500 with gvp hd8+ ? Or is it so that people want it to be fast as a light?

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How slow it is with hardfiles? Slower that original A500 with gvp hd8+ ? Or is it so that people want it to be fast as a light?

I have never had a real A500 GVP hard disk so I cant give an exact answer, but sysinfo gives a disk speed measure of 15986 bytes/sec for my 85MB hardfile on my minimig without an ARM board.

That hardly makes it a speed demon but it is usable. The biggest issue as far as I know is that larger hardfiles are a lot slower, but as my A1200 only had a 80MB disk when I got my first hard disk it dose not take away from the fun too much.

As I said before I mainly use my unexpanded minimig to play 1 and 2 disk games from adf images so I don't use hardfile support much on a basic Minimig so I cant really say how well hardfile support works using the PIC on a day to day basis.

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Sam440ep 667mhz, 512MB, 120GB 2.5" HD, OS4.1FE
WinUae 3.0.0, OS 3.9, BB3, Catweasel MkIV
Amiga 1200, Blizzard 040/40 (BlizzardPPC 060/200 with SCSI removed at present), mediatorSX pci, Voodoo3, PCI network card os 3.9BB2
4MB Minimig with ARM addon boar

>AmigaKIT should cooperate with Faranheit from NGI, I think he has some
>ARM boards. It would really be better for AmigaKIT to sell this with the
>ARM board?

Yes it is a shame they still sell the same Minimig that relied on 3 years old PCB design.
There are some new and free Minimig PCBs with MiniITX form factor and a lot of enhancements like the ARM board. It would ve great to see some dealers investing money into the Minimig development. The board manufactured by Acube is totally outdated.

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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

Quote:

There are some new and free Minimig PCBs with MiniITX form factor and a lot of enhancements like the ARM board. It would ve great to see some dealers investing money into the Minimig development. The board manufactured by Acube is totally outdated.

The specification of the Mini-ITX minimig is the same as the 4MB minimg and dose not include the ARM board, it just allows it to be plugged into the PIC socket just like the existing Minimig boards.

The biggest down sides to the existing boards is their non standard form factor and that the they cant support the enhanced Minimig core that is being developed with AGA and 020 processor emulation.

The existing Minimig is still a very good product and quite reasonable priced if you take the cost of adding a scan doubler, extra floppy drive and kickstart switcher to an A500 or A600 in to account.

It may not be the best solution for everyone, but mine has given me as much fun as my Wii has for a similar price when you add the cost of a second controller and a few extra games to play on it.

When the FPGA Arcade (http://www.fpgaarcade.com/) is finished an on sale I will probably thing about upgrading, but for now the Minimig remains the best gaming Amiga system I have purchased since getting my A1200, its not perfect but it is great fun.

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Sam440ep 667mhz, 512MB, 120GB 2.5" HD, OS4.1FE
WinUae 3.0.0, OS 3.9, BB3, Catweasel MkIV
Amiga 1200, Blizzard 040/40 (BlizzardPPC 060/200 with SCSI removed at present), mediatorSX pci, Voodoo3, PCI network card os 3.9BB2
4MB Minimig with ARM addon boar

@ Dwyloc

Agreed. My Minimig v1.1 is still my main gaming machine although I haven't powered it up for a while because I've been working on my A4000 tower project.

As a result, I haven't been following Minimig core development, but are you saying that a stock Minimig v1.1 with just the PIC can now use a hard file? That would be handy.

I've got one of the ARM expansions and the extra RAM, so what I really need to do is set up a Bloodwych "Classic Amiga" hard file with WHDLoad.

That will be a good task for me when I get off this rig in 2 weeks. :)

I'm sure there's a new core for me to install too as I haven't updated since last year.

Last edited by Darrin on 12-Aug-2010 at 05:51 PM.

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AmigaOne X1000, A4000(T), A3000, A2000, A1200(T), A1200, A500, CD32, Minimig+ARM, FPGA Arcade, Chameleon64, C-One, C128, C128D, C64C, C64, VIC-20, CBM 8032, CBM4032, Efika, Ultimate64

Is the software compatibility big ? On the v1.1 MiniMig ?

Almost as good as an A500+ ??

Quote:

Is the software compatibility big ? On the v1.1 MiniMig ?

I'd say better.

There's an old compatability list that I help to compile kicking around (I'll have to dig around and find a link to it). There were a few titles that had glitches, but most of them have been ironed out.

The advanatge the Minimig has is the ability to swap Kickstart images via the menu and choose the amounts of Chip RAM & Fast RAM and whether to use OCS/ECS (along with the number of drives and CPU speed).

Here it is:
http://www.opencircuits.com/Minimig_Software_compatibility

You can see how new cores have fixed games. It probably needs a good overhaul. I'll see if I can do some work on it when I get home. I've got 4 weeks off.

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AmigaOne X1000, A4000(T), A3000, A2000, A1200(T), A1200, A500, CD32, Minimig+ARM, FPGA Arcade, Chameleon64, C-One, C128, C128D, C64C, C64, VIC-20, CBM 8032, CBM4032, Efika, Ultimate64

In case you're confused as to why some games are reported as both FAIL and WORKS, there's a space for the "core" revision. If it is blank then it is the first core and if there are numbers (such as 080408) then that means the updated core released on "08/04/2008".

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AmigaOne X1000, A4000(T), A3000, A2000, A1200(T), A1200, A500, CD32, Minimig+ARM, FPGA Arcade, Chameleon64, C-One, C128, C128D, C64C, C64, VIC-20, CBM 8032, CBM4032, Efika, Ultimate64

Quote:

As a result, I haven't been following Minimig core development, but are you saying that a stock Minimig v1.1 with just the PIC can now use a hard file? That would be handy.

Here is a link to the PIC firmware with hardfile support. http://www.minimig.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=272

It works with this main firmware http://www.minimig.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=269

By using the two in combination you get most of the features of the ARM add on just using the PIC with a few limitations.

The main ones are:

- File names are not sorted into alphabetic order
- Hardfile emulation is much slower than with the ARM board
- the larger the hardfile you use the slower it gets.

I practical terms it means that a 80mb hardfile was a usable speed but a 2GB one was not.

_________________
Sam440ep 667mhz, 512MB, 120GB 2.5" HD, OS4.1FE
WinUae 3.0.0, OS 3.9, BB3, Catweasel MkIV
Amiga 1200, Blizzard 040/40 (BlizzardPPC 060/200 with SCSI removed at present), mediatorSX pci, Voodoo3, PCI network card os 3.9BB2
4MB Minimig with ARM addon boar

Thank you.

I'll try that new core and ARM firmware when I get home.

Up to now I've only been using a 20MB hard file with an OS3.1 install as I've been using ADF images for playing games. However, now I've got WHDload working on my A4000 I'd like to create a large (2GB) Hard File with a Classic Workbench install and my favourite WHDLoad games loaded.

I'll let you know how I get on.

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AmigaOne X1000, A4000(T), A3000, A2000, A1200(T), A1200, A500, CD32, Minimig+ARM, FPGA Arcade, Chameleon64, C-One, C128, C128D, C64C, C64, VIC-20, CBM 8032, CBM4032, Efika, Ultimate64

Tempting, nice case too. Assume there is a flash video on the page? (browsing with OWB and just see the plugin icon)

@amigakit

Could you put up a URL for the video? Thanks.

that's the real amiga ng!

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Quote:

that's the real amiga ng!

Not really, 'NG' implies next generation, the minimig is reproducing the A500 in a smaller form factor with some modern conveniences like the SD card slot. There are more powerful classic Amigas, e.g. the models with ECS or AGA. I don't think you can call the minimig a next gen Amiga, it's part of the classic generation really. Don't get me wrong though, it is a cool product and I wouldn't mind finding one under the christmas tree .

Quote:

Not really

Depends what way you look at it if you define a next generation Amiga as a new computer for running existing Amiga software (in this case games) then the Minimig is as much a next generation Amiga as the sam and OS4 is as it runs more existing software than the sam440 and OS4.1 dose.

Thats not to say I want to replace my sam with my Minimig, just that it is everybit as much a modern solution to playing Amiga games as my sam is a modern solution to running Amiga productivity software

_________________
Sam440ep 667mhz, 512MB, 120GB 2.5" HD, OS4.1FE
WinUae 3.0.0, OS 3.9, BB3, Catweasel MkIV
Amiga 1200, Blizzard 040/40 (BlizzardPPC 060/200 with SCSI removed at present), mediatorSX pci, Voodoo3, PCI network card os 3.9BB2
4MB Minimig with ARM addon boar