The Amiga on a Chip Project - Too bad it was canceled

[pcbdev]

Ah, not minimig ... I meant minimigtg68

[pcbdev]

Do you know the minimig project?

As far as I know it's quite complete ... Just one month ago (or so) there was an update for the Altera DE1 board.

[rogermp7]

I love your work Jeri! I just saw my Amiga 500 sitting in a box in my garage yesterday and wondered if there was anything interesting I could do with it. Perhaps I'll build a MIDI interface and use it for music.

[nullsmack]

I never even thought of this but now I'm kinda sad it didn't pan out. Though, I have to admit the C64 stuff means a lot more to me because that's what I had. By the time I heard about the Amigas, I already had an IBM 486sx20. Still missed out on the C64 chips as well. Do those exist in retail anymore or just on the used market now?

[Squonk421]

Just replace the hxxp:// in the provided link, or try searching for "minimig de1" in google.

You will need to register with yahoo groups and join this group to access the files.

[Squonk421]

Just to let you know that the minimigtg68 project by Dennis van Weeren with the TG68 CPU Core by Tobias Gubener is running on a stock Altera DE1 or DE2 FPGA board. You just need to build a small passive adapter to get both mouse and joystick at the same time.

Project homepage is at hxxp://gamesource.dir.groups.y­ahoo.com/group/minimigtg68/?v=­1&t=directory&ch=web&pub=group­s&sec=dir&slk=1

However, you still need the original ROM contents to make it work...

[pandy071]

On movie in 1:20 some schematics for IC is visible also some Eng from Commodore/Amiga? is mentioned - is there any chance to make those IC schematics available somewhere? Accordingly to many Amiga Eng original IC schematics are lost...

At least people involved in Minimig (open Amiga clone) can be interested on some details.

TIA

[sm4wwg]

You amazing chip designer girl you! :D

[robwasab]

wow, this is really intense

[D6Film]

No more no less - Amiga rules! :)

Hardcore project & pity for canceling it.

[fischX]

Did the release of Minimig 2005 played a role?

[jeriellsworth]

@fischX I didn't know about minimig until several years after.

[neon32]

Your so smart! :D

[ProteusMega]

Well the "fan base" has been shrinking for years. Look at how hard the "Viva Amiga" (a great amiga documentary that is searching to be funded at Kickstart) project is having to get it's 25K USD.

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@ProteusMega They looked strictly at the units sold when we had the "fan base" discussion. There were some unfortunate things happening to the industry around that time too.

[MrAhle2]

It hurts me see such an awesome project being scrapped. Even though I have got 5 Amigas in my collection, I still would have bought an Amiga in a joystick if available.

I will eventually try to emulate the VIC II on a Parallax Propeller MCU. Do you have any indepth documentation to share?

The goal is to make a C64 emulation running on a single Propeller MCU. I have already got the SID chip running in a single core.

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@MrAhle2 The VICE project helped a lot. They've figured out many of the c64s quirks at a high level. I didn't think the descriptions of the quirks always matched real hardware, but it's a great start.

[afachat1]

Hearing that VICE helped a lot is cool to hear as one of the (now retired) members of the VICE team!

[Daytona675x]

How about crowd founding? I bet you'll collect enough bucks to make it realitiy.

[Daytona675x]

"lack of fan base" was one of the main reasons it got canceled? What a joke! In fact the Amiga fan base is very strong and willing to pay for anything that keeps their beloved machine or its spirit alive - and I'm not just speeking for myself :)

[kidcodea]

Jeri was a GODESS to me, before i saw this video.

Now that i know she was doing the most revolutionary and influential computer of alltime on a chip i lack on adjectives. I hope DEITY is good enuff.

[zombieman81]

Haha brings back memories... I remember once cbm released their cd drive for the 500 I worked out how to drive the cd hardware (no documentation released to the public) and wrote my own cd player program with a built in cd database engine all in 68000 assembly...fun times...

[a120068020]

I would certainly want to get this made as a C64 DTV type machine!

[chepossofare]

A question: the audio witch this FPGA was equal as the original?

'cause, at our days, we aren't able to recreate a SID (DAC or analogic filters? mistery), i don't know 'bout Paula.

PS: excuse me for my bad english, i'm Italian ;)

[konfyoused]

I've actually got a collection of old Amiga hardware, last count it was like 6 A2000's 2 A1000's an a500, an a3000, and an a4000. even have a GVP accelerator card for the A2000 that had the 68030+fpu that ran at 40Mhz held 16mb ram and had the scsi 2 interface ;-)

[jacgoudsmit]

I wish I could give this more than 1 "like"! ;-)

I owned an A500 and an A3000. The A500 spent most of its time in the same state as the one in the video: I had a Western Digital RLL ISA hard disk controller connected to a self-made PCB underneath the 68000.

The SCSI bus on my A3000 and PC were connected so I could use the PC's CD-ROM drive from the Amiga. I had to get rid of both Amigas when I emigrated from the Netherlands to the USA even though the A3000 had a US power supply.

I miss them!

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@jacgoudsmit Sounds like you really hacked on it. :)

[jarnoob]

@jacgoudsmit saddest thing is if you left them only because of PSUs as you can use normal at or atx pc psu on amiga with an adapter :P

[jacgoudsmit]

@jarnoob I left my Amigas behind because they were just part of my big pile of "do I really want to pay beaucoup to keep this". On the one hand, with all the interest in retro computers and retro gaming (see also my project on my own Youtube homepage) I wish I would still have all my old hardware and software (I had hundreds of floppy discs and CD-ROMs). On the other hand, my house would have been too small. I just hope that whoever got all my stuff for cheap, has put it to good use.

[tanioklyce]

The MCC-216 from arcaderetrogaming is an FPGA-based system that runs Amiga 500, C64, Atari 2600, and Apple II.

It doesn't have the "Ellsworth Inside" sticker, but still very cool.

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@tanioklyce What good is it without a (J) inside logo?

[8bitbubsy]

Sweet. Any chance you could scan the schematics and put them online..?

If the author is ok with that, of course.

[rovku]

How about open sourcing it and let someone else take over?

[ajcrm125]

@rovku The folks over at FPGAARCADE are working on just that. Do a search for fpgaarcade here and you'll see a demo.

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@rovku People have already made amiga on FPGAs now. I don't know how much use a steaming pile of code from 8 years ago would be. :)

[homebrewedpinball]

so sad when you work hard on project that never go anywhere. I remember when I was heavy into the amiga I played a lot of games from europe which were Pal (alternate kickstart disk), and because of the 100 extra lines it would get cut off, so you'd have to manually adjust the monitor with the variable pot resistor dial. Did it so often it eventually snapped off the board, so my brother took it apart and tried different resistor values to get it the right squish, and put in a toggle switch

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@homebrewedpinball I remember doing that. :)

[DixieGeek]

Very cool! I wish you could have brought this to fruition. I bought one of the very first Amiga 1000's in 1985. I still have it.

[randomgarfield]

@DixieGeek yup still have my A1000 in a cupboard. Along with my VIC20 and my C64. Funny I can't say the same about all my PC and Apples I've owned. :)

[randomgarfield]

Wow very cool, would have been a bit different to the MiniMig which uses a real 68K. Would have been nice to have had it built. Oh well. Seems funny that "Amiga" wasn't a recognised brand, when in Europe/Australia Amiga was "it" for a while.

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@randomgarfield I don't think the Amiga sold in the volumes like C64 and that's what they were looking at.

[randomgarfield]

@JeriEllsworthJabber well duh, it's hard to top the best selling computer of all time! :) Shame really all that work and not outcome. Amiga has some die hard fans, I'm sure it would have done pretty well if it ran all the games true.

[homebrewedpinball]

@JeriEllsworthJabber Amiga was also very expensive when compared to the C-64. I believe C-64 was about $300 at the time of release, amiga 1000 (only 512k ram) was easily near $1000. The amiga500a made it much more affordable, but was much later. Sure it was WAY ahead of it's time, and still a bargain for what it did, but a very different crowd. I agree, not the same following, though still a niche.

[maiki60fps]

@homebrewedpinball Yes, Amiga was very expensive and certainly not designed well because it completely lacked the clear destination - it was partly a gaming system but not quite that advanced, partly a musical device but rather useless without synthesisers, partly an office PC that was not IBM... overpriced jack of all trades that did nothing right in the times when even the cost of a single chip mattered a lot; Atari ST for sure was a better buy if someone wanted IBM incompatible for any reason

[doritostheking]

@maiki60fps 26 Years later and still spreading lies? Grow up.

[Commodorian]

@maiki60fps "Atari ST for sure was a better buy if someone wanted IBM incompatible for any reason"

The Falcon yes but the ST has no chance in hell..... it was basically a stripped down Amiga with no copper, no hardware sprites, no blitter and it uses a horrible sounding PSG .

[doritostheking]

@Commodorian You forgot the horrible OS too.

The ST really was nothing more than a cheap office computer, crippled by a lack of expansion bus and wedged into a case with a bad keyboard nailed on. Nice for the cost, but then what?

[doritostheking]

@Commodorian I just noticed, Galahad from farlight even thinks this guy is an idiot - check his channel page!

[Commodorian]

@doritostheking The haters and trollers on YT. Why did he even bother commenting on this video when its clear he has no knowledge or interest in the Amiga at all ?

On another note. This was quite an interesting project and its a shame it never saw the light of day. I would be interested to know what Jeri thinks of the Natami ? I know that Dave Haynie had some good things to say about it recently.

[shaurz]

It would be so awesome if modern single chip Amigas were made today, not just a joystick plug and play but a full computer with keyboard.

[kidcodea]

@shaurz google "natami"

[shaurz]

@kidcodea I have seen that before but I forgot about it. Hopefully it will be finished and reasonably affordable.

[nathanallan1]

the home game market is making a rise again, the FB2 got cloned and it sold out. I wish this had come to life, I would have gotten it. Love the C64 DTV to this day.

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@nathanallan1 It was completely flat for years. Jakks Pacific made some terrible games (so did we Hummer, Williams Home Arcade)

[tng1701e]

Would love to have had this.. Would have been cool to mod it like the DTV64..

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@tng1701e It would've been very cool. The ASIC I was targetting was .18um CMOS, so it would've had the ability to run faster than the original.

[sk7ca]

Woah! that's SO awesome! so sad that you never got it finished.

[JeriEllsworthJabber]

@sk7ca It was working in the FPGA.

[sk7ca]

@JeriEllsworthJabber Yeah, that's extremely cool! :D but it's sad that it never became a finished portable device :) that would have been too cool!

[TheMightyOhm]

Cool! Thanks for sharing this!