Amiga Mini Teased

[ransom1122]

Originally Posted by chip

Increasing the Amiga community is always a good thing !

The most accurate amiga experience away from emulation is mister fpga, so if its anything worse, your leading the new increasing amiga community backwards.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by ransom1122

The most accurate amiga experience away from emulation is mister fpga, so if its anything worse, your leading the new increasing amiga community backwards.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[stevelord]

Or in this case, don't let perfect be the enemy of an obvious low quality cash grab.

[ransom1122]

[clebin]

Originally Posted by stevelord

Or in this case, don't let perfect be the enemy of an obvious low quality cash grab.

Business practices aside, the C64 'maxi' feels very high-quality. It looks just like the real thing, it's solidly built and the keyboard is good. The menu system has the kind of simple, attractive, user-friendliness that you just don't get on a MiST or similar.

The joystick, however, is a bit flimsy and if I had one major criticism it would be the lack of 9-pin joystick ports.

I know that's not the kind of nuance that some people are looking for here and they'd rather it was all just shit start to finish, but they did a nice job on a lot of stuff - sorry.

This is a Christmas present for someone who once had an Amiga but can't remember the names of all the games they had. EDIT: Pub bores will always find plenty to dislike in devices like this, but let's be honest, the Amiga community is bloody negative about most things and possibly best ignored.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by ransom1122

The most accurate amiga experience away from emulation is mister fpga, so if its anything worse, your leading the new increasing amiga community backwards.

Who said the most accurate emulation would being the most new people to the Amiga scene? Casual users aren't going to pay £200-£250 on an ugly box they have no clue to setup.

Even if you don’t like the idea of the Amiga Mini, it will at first bring in casual users, and at least a small percentage of those will continue their Amiga usage by buying things like Mister, Vampires, old hardware etc

The only hope of increasing the small Amiga user base at a higher percentage than it currently is, is by going cheap and going easy with plug and play machines.

[clebin]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Who said the most accurate emulation would being the most new people to the Amiga scene? Casual users aren't going to pay £200-£250 on an ugly box they have no clue to setup.

Even if you don’t like the idea of the Amiga Mini, it will at first bring in casual users, and at least a small percentage of those will continue their Amiga usage by buying things like Mister, Vampires, old hardware etc

The only hope of increasing the small Amiga user base at a higher percentage than it currently is, is by going cheap and going easy with plug and play machines.

You are missing the point that anyone who wants to join the userbase has to know how to recap a board, what the licensing status of AmigaOS is, and to be miserable.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by clebin

You are missing the point that anyone who wants to join the userbase has to know how to recap a board, what the licensing status of AmigaOS is, and to be miserable.

Damn your right, maybe they can include a 30 page screen test you have to go through to catch up on all the shit from the past 26 years to be allowed to play on the Amiga Mini

[dreadnought]

I'm not a fan of Cloanto, Andrews, the whole Mini craze, and so on. Subconsciously I probably want them all to fail, and hard.

But the fact remains I've seen many positive comments about C64 Maxi, and that's not just from some super casual randoms who wanted to rationalize their purchase, but people who genuinely enjoy using this machine, from games playing to getting into coding again. So...perhaps we should wait and see, before deciding it's a low-quality pile of shite?

[Pyromania]

I’m waiting for the release of the Amiga MaxiPad

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by stevelord

Or in this case, don't let perfect be the enemy of an obvious low quality cash grab.

The C64 Maxi was quite well received by my friends who had an C64 in the 80ies.

Off course it doesn't stand a chance for those "holier than thou" people that need cycle exact emulation for playing a round of Turrican or Giana sisters once in a while.

Lol.
Some people are really living in a tiny little bubble.

[amiman99]

I will withhold my judgment until I see the unit. We don't know ANYTHING about it.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by clebin

You are missing the point that anyone who wants to join the userbase has to know how to recap a board, what the licensing status of AmigaOS is, and to be miserable.

Yeah, let's do the crab in the bucket!!!

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by stevelord

Or in this case, don't let perfect be the enemy of an obvious low quality cash grab.

Exactly....

We dont need/want a dodgy PS Mini style emulation. A Pi4 will do a good job already. Not sure I also see the value in an Amiga style case with sub par emulation inside. If its a case for a Pi3/4 in Amiga style and can be bought standalone, MAYBE....

But lets be honest.. its jump on the bandwagon time and see if we can fleece the nostalgic old people

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

Exactly....

We dont need/want a dodgy PS Mini style emulation. A Pi4 will do a good job already. Not sure I also see the value in an Amiga style case with sub par emulation inside. If its a case for a Pi3/4 in Amiga style and can be bought standalone, MAYBE....

"We" and "us" are just a tiny little group of enthusiasts and not the target of this.
So if "we" see any value in this is completely uninteresting.

This is for people that want to relive a bit of their childhood without completely diving into this weirdo hobby and spending a couple hundred quid for some 30 year old plastic and sillicon crap.

And that can only be good for our little scene, because a few of them will maybe stay.

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by Steril707

"We" and "us" are just a tiny little group of enthusiasts and not the target of this.
So if "we" see any value in this is completely uninteresting.

This is for people that want to relive a bit of their childhood without completely diving into this weirdo hobby and spending a couple hundred quid for some 30 year old plastic and sillicon crap.

And that can only be good for our little scene, because a few of them will maybe stay.

So sell them a Pi4 in an Amiga mini case... (I'll be happy if its that) just definitely NOT a H3 CPU with 256Mb ram running a sub par Amiga emulation... (thats what I am expecting)...

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

So sell them a Pi4 in an Amiga mini case... (I'll be happy if its that) just definitely NOT a H3 CPU with 256Mb ram running a sub par Amiga emulation... (thats what I am expecting)...

Smh...

Why is it so hard to understand that many people either can't be bothered, or are not tech savvy enough to faff around with RPis and custom cases?

I'm also curious of what your definition of a "H3 CPU" is, plus how the emulation would be "sub par"?

[FOL]

Is this related?


TheA500 TradeMark Application

[stevelord]

Such lovely people, trademarking words for products they had nothing to do with. But no, lets give these people who went after a youtuber for using Horace in her videos the benefit of the doubt.


If only there was a word for this particular type of uninvited blood sucker that comes in the night, they could register that as their trademark too.


I think by H3 CPU Methanoid is referring to the Allwinner H3 Sun-xi chip used in their C64 (and other) models. That comes with 256Mb of RAM, which I imagine they'll try to keep things within as they'll have to change the board design which will cost extra.



So an ancient Cortex A7 CPU with 256Mb of RAM probably running a variant of uae4all is going to be the most likely outcome. If that's the case buyers will be paying for a 6 year old chipset with gimped specs and will be lucky if this runs Turrican smoothly.


For Amiga emu on ARM done right, I would've rather seen at least 512Mb-1Gb of RAM and something with an A35 like the MediaTek in the PS Classic. The reason you want this is because the ARM UAE versions aren't very well optimized (you can't optimize across so many different types of ARM setup), have memory leaks (at least when I've looked at them) and the jump to AGA or Akiko in performance isn't really that much compared to the overhead needed for decent ECS performance in some games and demos. Of course I suspect they'll target a similar price point to their C64 around the 100 quid point for about 20 quid's worth of electronics.

[Weaselrama]

If anyone needs a reminder of the history of the longest-running lawsuit in Computerdom, here's Jon Aasenden's excellent article on the subject:

https://jonlennartaasenden.wordpress...-of-computing/