Checkmate A3000 inspired Mini ITX case Kickstarter
Date 30-Dec-2020 16:55:42
Topic: Announcement
| *** 10 Days until the end of the funding ***
The Story
Checkmate A1500 Mini from iMica Ltd
Imagine a brand new, Commodore Amiga 3000 inspired desktop computer case sitting on your desk today, that's what we want to bring to you again.
Following on from the successful launch of the Checkmate 1500 Plus case Kickstarter in 2019 we wanted to add a smaller and more compact case to the range.
Please visit the Checkmate 1500 mini Kickstarter for all of the details, information and videos surrounding this project.
This new case, is for building an Amiga without having any Amiga parts, this is why we have had two FPGA board adapters designed, see lower down, to create perfect recreations of an accelerated AGA based Amiga 1200, as well as a Mini ITX fitting kit for the Raspberry Pi4. Of course, you could just fit a Mini ITX PC instead.
Mini-ITX based system board options
We have developed in house and with community partners, two Mini ITX based FPGA options, an ITX fitting kit for the Raspberry Pi4 and hopefully Vampire standalone adapter kits to build complete and new Amiga compatible solution including officially licensed Amiga OS's.
We will build complete custom systems configured to suit your needs and shipped fully tested. But we will also supply a list of all components so the community can build their own systems which was successfully proven after the Checkmate 1500 Plus Kickstarter campaign.
FPGA Solutions
There are two options at the moment, UnAmiga-ITX and Mist-IX both developed by Edu Arana and available to order after the kickstarter in complete build or as an option or at Arananet Shop.
We hope to offer a Vampire stand alone fitting kit as well and part of the funding money will go to purchasing the Vampire V4.
UnAmiga-ITX
Developed by Edu Arana as well as Jepalza, Benitoss, Neuro, Rampa069 and many others to support this case. It holds a small low cost FPGA unit in the center and offers great value for money. It lacks some features of the DE10 Nano based MiST-IX board (such as USB, high speed Network and HDMI), but feels very much like the essence of an Amiga. It offers over 2X performance of an A3000 (no fpu) but with AGA and OCS/ECS graphics and RTG high resolution modes built in at up to 1024x768 15 bit and 1280x720 15 bit on top of all Amiga AGA modes. It also supports serial based and speed TCP/IP for basic ftp and internet functionality over wifi.
Please note it uses VGA output only and PS2 keyboard and mice
Mist-IX
This board, also developed by Edu Arana to support this case project is an adaptor board to take the DE10 Nano FPGA board used in the MiSter project by Alexey Melnikov.
In Amiga mode, using the MiniMig core it offers nearly 3x performance of an A3000 but with AGA graphics and RTG high resolution modes upto 1024x768 24 bit and 1280x720 24 bit on top of all Amiga AGA modes. As well as all of this, it can connect to the Internet allowing file transfer via ftp between this system and your other computers.
Click for the Original Checkmate 1500 Plus Kickstarter
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