amiga-news.de - Minimig: Report on the FPGA-Amiga presentation in Maarssen

18.Feb.2006
Volker Mohr (E-Mail)

Minimig: Report on the FPGA-Amiga presentation in Maarssen
Today, in the club meeting of the Commodore Gebruikers Groep in Dutch Maarssen, the FPGA-based Amiga replica 'Minimig' was publicly introduced by its developer, Dennis van Weeren (reported by amiga-news.de).

Volker Mohr has visited the event and composed a short report for amiga-news.de. You can find his photos at the end of this article. In addition, he writes:

"On February 18, the 'Commodore Gebruikers Groep' (CGG) invited to one of their regular meetings in Maarssen near Utrecht again. In the homely setting, this time there were three interesting news at once to gaze at. Two of them were Jiffy DOS for the VC 20 - a highly compatible fast-loader with extended operating system - as well as the 1541-III by Jan Derogee.

The latter is a PIC microcontroller, which uses an MMC/SD as drive via the IEC bus - and can thus be used on the C 64, VC 20 and even the C64-DTV. Thereby, the circuit behaves like a 1541 drive, hence was the name 1541-III chosen. On the FAT-16-formatted MMC/SD card, disk images in the well-known D64 format are located, which are recognized as 5.25" disks.

However, the actual sensation of the day is the Minimig. Club member Dennis reproduced a complete Amiga 500 with OCS in FPGA technology. As can be recognized in the pictures, the prototype, except for puniest errors, already behaves like a real Amiga.

Games were usable with mouse and joystick, a keyboard was yet missing. The laptop on the fringes served merely as floppy substitute, to be able to run disk images on the Minimig. Jens Schönfeld from individual Computers from Aachen was enthused as well and talking shop with Dennis for a long time.

In any case, it is certain that the Amiga clone based on FPGA, mentioned for the first time in December of last year in the forum of Amiga.org, is by no means a matter of hoax, but an amazing marvel of technology.

So let's hope that this device can arouse interest in the industry, because as compact games console like the C64-DTV, it could bring the name Amiga back into the awareness of the public again."

vc20.jpg (640 x 480)	minimig7.jpg (640 x 480)
minimig6.jpg (640 x 480)	minimig5.jpg (640 x 480)
minimig4.jpg (640 x 480)	minimig3.jpg (640 x 480)
minimig2.jpg (640 x 480)	minimig1.jpg (640 x 480)
1541III.1.jpg (640 x 480)	1541III-3.jpg (640 x 480)
1541III-2.jpg (640 x 480)

In addition to Volker Mohr's report, further photos and comments can be found in the already-mentioned forum on Amiga.org. (snx) (Translation: cad)

[News message: 18. Feb. 2006, 17:17] [Comments: 0]
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