Special MiSTer Amiga build

[MickGyver]

In honour of the great MiSTer project (FPGA Amiga etc.) I built this special "Amiga". The case is made from solid Teak and the keyboard is a CDTV keyboard. The keyboard and digital joysticks are connected to the MISTer via an Arduino Pro Micro: https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?t...501#msg3895501

FEATURES

• Exclusive Teak case (hand made)
• CDTV Keyboard (no mods needed so non-destructive, works in all cores that support a keyboard)
• OSD and Reset buttons
• Power and Disk Activity LEDs
• Power Switch
• HDMI and RGB (same VGA to Scart cable as MIST uses) video outputs
• RCA Stereo Audio Outputs
• Two digital joystick ports
• Two USB ports (for mouse, gamepads)
• Ethernet port (can also be used from Amiga core)
• SD Card port

The MiSTer (if you don't already know) is based on the Terasic DE10-Nano FPGA development board and runs a lot of cores including Amiga AGA (Minimig), C64, Mega Drive, NES, SNES, TurboGrafx16/PCEngine, Spectrum, Atari ST, Arcade games and several others, too many to name all. I recommend that you look into it!

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki

[Pyromania]

Interesting project.

[attle]

Hats off, that is *really* well crafted

[Allen1]

That's a nice piece of workmanship I wish that I was as handy and neat as you have been in this project. Excellently done and well thought out

[Locutus]

slightly ographic.

[Mick]

Very nice craftmanship but is it fireproof?

[utri007]

Can you tell how well mister performs? I can't found any perfomance measurements of it. Sys Speed, Sys Info, AIBB etc.

There seems to be nice memory addons to it, like 256mb.

[mattsoft]

Here is SysInfo using the 68020 in MiSTer.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by utri007

Can you tell how well mister performs? I can't found any perfomance measurements of it. Sys Speed, Sys Info, AIBB etc.

There seems to be nice memory addons to it, like 256mb.

Like mattsoft showed, the performance isn't groundbreaking, but compatibility is very good since it uses the mature Minimig core. You can set it up to have 24MB fast RAM. It also has turbo loading for adf disk images. I'm very happy with it, very convenient system for playing 8 and 16 bit games.

[malko]

really nice case

[Pyromania]

Very nice design.

[jediknight]

awesome love it can you try and use blitz basic on a 1200 setup on your mister please and see if it works well if it does im going to make a mister and program a new aga game thanks.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by jediknight

awesome love it can you try and use blitz basic on a 1200 setup on your mister please and see if it works well if it does im going to make a mister and program a new aga game thanks.

Sure I can try it out but I can't see a reason why it wouldn't work, the Minimig core is really good.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by jediknight

awesome love it can you try and use blitz basic on a 1200 setup on your mister please and see if it works well if it does im going to make a mister and program a new aga game thanks.

I have tested Blitz Basic 2.1 briefly on the Minimig-AGA core for the MiSTer and it seems to work fine.

[Wayne123]

Very nice case, well done.

[MickGyver]

Insides...

[Heywood]

Do you have a build log with more in-progress pics?

I really like the look of this - did you have to use a router or something to make up the difference between the thickness of the keyboard case vs the timber?

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by Heywood

Do you have a build log with more in-progress pics?

I really like the look of this - did you have to use a router or something to make up the difference between the thickness of the keyboard case vs the timber?

Thanks! Sorry, I don't have a build log.

I used a handheld router for some of the ports on the back only. The top panel timber was the correct depth to start. I took measurements from the keyboard and used a drill to cut holes big enough for a jigsaw blade. I then used a jigsaw to cut the holes for the keys. I had to cut out some wood on the back due to a few extruding plastic pins on the keyboard. The rest of the work is done with hand tools.

I get teak (leftover pieces) from a company here in Finland that makes decks for luxury sailing boats, the pieces are usually planed to less than 10mm depth. Teak is otherwise very expensive wood, but since I buy leftover pieces from that company, I save a lot.

[MartinW]

So, SYSINFO is reporting 68020@80Mhz or just about. Any idea if anything much is likely to be limited by the 68020? 80Mhz ought to be quite tidy but I've only ever used 68030 or 68060 and I've sort of always assumed the sweet spot is 68030 with as fast a speed as possible.

I'm guessing that for games in particular very little will need an 030. It's very tempting to buy a DE-10 to replace my aging DE-1. I'm a bit surprised by the lack of an Atari ST core however.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by MartinW

So, SYSINFO is reporting 68020@80Mhz or just about. Any idea if anything much is likely to be limited by the 68020? 80Mhz ought to be quite tidy but I've only ever used 68030 or 68060 and I've sort of always assumed the sweet spot is 68030 with as fast a speed as possible.

I'm guessing that for games in particular very little will need an 030. It's very tempting to buy a DE-10 to replace my aging DE-1. I'm a bit surprised by the lack of an Atari ST core however.

I can't say much about performance, it has been working great for me but I'm mainly interested in games that work on vanilla Amiga machines.

There is an Atari ST core available, called FX Cast. It's quite accurate as far as I know with a cycle accurate 68k implementation, there are some features still missing from it though, like floppy save support.