New - Amiga Romulator for A500 - A600

[Magic]

Congratulations Kipper this is Awesome! I would like to be able to put one of these in my A2000, A3000T, and also in my A4000T. Please keep up the development on these awesome projects!

[wiz12]

Is it only Aotl that will be selling these or can we also buy them through European resellers like Amigakit or Amigstore?

[McTrinsic]

Great stuff!

Where can I buy them in Europe and when?

[fryguy]

I'm interested in an A1200 version.

[ramonsmits]

I would like one! Shipping to the Netherlands / Europe.

[albatorsk]

I would definitely buy an A1200 version. Especially now with development of AmigaOS seems to have started again with 3.1.4, and who know if there will be for example a Kickstart 3.2?

[kipper2k]

Hi All, so i was doing a lot of thinking and i am wondering about something that i think is possible but i do not know about Amiga coding too much so if it is a stupid idea be nice to me lol...

Using the Romulator will allow you to use custom roms. On a 16 bit A500 you can use a maximum 1MB ROM (which is the size of the RAM chip we have on board).

The A600 has a 8375 Agnus capable of addressing 2MB so if we have the 2MB RAM then in theory your ROM could be up to 2MB in size. For the A1200 the same applies in 32bit mode, so here is my thoughts.

Think SNES where the SNES load ROM images and have instant access to game loads. What is to stop people creating custom ROMs that load games directly into memory so that the Amiga can do the same. I understand there are limitations with RAM availability and who knows in theory you could still mount a floppy etc to load estra levels or whatever.

I know some games provide their own libs etc and are not hostage to a WB so i think this is doable to some extent...

Am i out in left field on this ????

[AJCopland]

Would love an A1200 version, but will probably want an A500/A600 one too!

As for the ROM image idea, I don't think there's any reason that wouldn't work, if you can have a big enough rom/ram on it then you could have most of the usual ROM/WB stuff in there. SNES roms ranged of 256k to ~4MiB

[Romanujan]

@kipper2k - http://lallafa.de/blog/amiga-projects/romdisk/

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by Romanujan

@kipper2k - http://lallafa.de/blog/amiga-projects/romdisk/

ooooooh!, that looks very interesting. hopefully we can do some good things with this . it would make for some good demo shows at the very least.

p.s. I have designed a little board so the A2k CPU and Romulator sits in the Copro board, much like my Vampire copro board that i originally designed. It will make life a little easier for people to update/swap etc and wont interfere with agnus megachip installations etc

[LuMan]

This looks absolutely fantastic, Kipper. Excellent work. Trying to figure out why anyone would NOT want one!!

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by LuMan

This looks absolutely fantastic, Kipper. Excellent work. Trying to figure out why anyone would NOT want one!!

Thanks for the kind words, I will look at adding an expansion board for the A1000. I have also looked at the 32bit systems and i think it is possible to make 1 romulator to fit them all with a little trickery

[amigo-mexicano]

Kipper, you always amaze us with these releases. I want to try one on my A1000, will keep an eye on AOTL catalog!

[Marlon_]

You mention USB in the original post, will it be possible to load ROM files directly over USB? That would be very useful for AROS 68k development

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by Marlon_

You meantion USB in the original post, will it be possible to load ROM files directly over USB? That would be very useful for AROS 68k development

Hi Marlon.

When you turn your Amiga on you can jump into an "Update Romulator" mode by pressing a set of combo keys which will allow you to download a USB update file if available from your PC directly to the Flash on the Romulator.

When you boot normally into Amiga you simply plug in a USB cable from Romulator to the PC and you will be able to access the SD card on the Romulator allowing you to add/delete files etc

There is no need to remove the SD card from the romulator once you have the romulator installed. The easiest thing to do would be to just feed a USB cable to your PC, i am sure there is someone out there who can design a little USB plate for it

[Marlon_]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

Hi Marlon.

When you turn your Amiga on you can jump into an "Update Romulator" mode by pressing a set of combo keys which will allow you to download a USB update file if available from your PC directly to the Flash on the Romulator.

When you boot normally into Amiga you simply plug in a USB cable from Romulator to the PC and you will be able to access the SD card on the Romulator allowing you to add/delete files etc

There is no need to remove the SD card from the romulator once you have the romulator installed. The easiest thing to do would be to just feed a USB cable to your PC, i am sure there is someone out there who can design a little USB plate for it

Nice! =) Would definitely want one for Amiga 1200

[demoniac]

This product is very nice in both the specs and the final design!

[ME-tan]

Another request here for A1200 version!

[Hewitson]

Would you consider adding a vertical slot to the top of the PCB to make it look even more like a penis?

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Would you consider adding a vertical slot to the top of the PCB to make it look even more like a penis?

lol, i did, but the Chinese manufacturer removed it. I was going to make the fat part round but that would have turned a few more heads. There are so many addons for the Amigas nowadays I was trying to keep it as small as possible. I was hoping to get away with one design for both the a500 and a600 but overhead space was an issue

edit; 1 thing i have noticed with the round machined pins on the headers is they are very fragile and when attempting to push them into a round pin header if the pins are not lined up perfectly then you can easily bend a pin.

For the A2000 i am going to use the older spring leaf type sockets for the Romulator as they allow for a bit of misalignment. I cannot find a spring leaf type 64 pin socket for the CPU so i will have to use the round pin type. (and same for the A1000)