Amiga 500 Mini?

[squirminator2k]

Having watched the trailer a hojillion times, I've noticed some wiggling in the WormsDC HUD. I'm not an expert, but as I understand it some emulators don't handle subpixels in AGA games particularly well, and this results in some unfortunate graphical glitches in games that use them extensively - such as WormsDC.

I'm probably still going to try and snag one of these, but I have concerns.

[JonSick]

I just pre-ordered one from game. I'm usually sceptical about these things and about the only one of these things I actually enjoyed using was the SNES incarnation. Sadly they had rocketed up to stupid money by the time I wanted to get my hands on one, sorry not paying £300 for an emulator in a fancy box when it was £60 to have bought new. Ah well, c'est la vie.

But yeah, as this thing comes out next March apparently I guess we'll wait and see. Happy to post about it when I do get it. That said, that date of 31st March does look suspiciously like they're pushing it to the furthest point they can, as in right at the end of Q1. My cynical side says it'll be delayed.

[DonAmiga]

Just pre ordered on Amazon uk if anyone interested I haven’t looked into it to much but with Amazon no payment is taken until dispatched so easy to cancel if I change my mind

[Muadebe]

The A500 mini will emulate A500 (OCS, ECS) and A1200 (AGA) so should be a nice all in one solution to rival a Pi400.
I hope they release an A500 Maxi........

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Muadebe

The A500 mini will emulate A500 (OCS, ECS) and A1200 (AGA) so should be a nice all in one solution to rival a Pi400.
I hope they release an A500 Maxi........

Me too.

If they go to the bother of a well made case and mechanical keyboard then it will make it easy to build a replica A500/A1200 FGPA based system or even use a real motherboard maybe (with some drilling for the ports).

[Pyromania]

I preordered the A500 Mini to support this project. Hopefully 2022 is a great year for Amiga.

[fstarred]

What hardware is mounted on A500 mini? I searched for info but with no result.
Also, do you think there would be any benefit in terms of lag between an emulator running winuae on PC and the a500 mini (or a future hypothetical version maxi)?

[Pyromania]

We will have to compare once it’s available.

[tFt]

[ Show youtube player ]

[kriz]

Great production have started, but why disable comments on their Youtube ?

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by squirminator2k

Having watched the trailer a hojillion times, I've noticed some wiggling in the WormsDC HUD. I'm not an expert, but as I understand it some emulators don't handle subpixels in AGA games particularly well, and this results in some unfortunate graphical glitches in games that use them extensively - such as WormsDC.

I'm probably still going to try and snag one of these, but I have concerns.

Yep, probably a legitimate concern alright. Some emulators simply don't support subpixel scrolling, and those that do require significantly more horsepower to do it, so it's disabled by default in WinUAE. And it's a while since I checked, but even WinUAE didn't support subpixel positioning 100% a couple of years back, and IIRC it was to do with dual playfield displays (which Worms: DC makes use of).

Originally Posted by kriz

Great production have started, but why disable comments on their Youtube ?

Perhaps they're aware of how discussions with significant portions of the Amiga community often descend into bashing, trolling and general hate, and are just heading that crowd off at the pass?

[pngcan]

Hey friends, will one be able to run programs on the mini? I'm assuming since you can load your own games via USB, will you be able to load applications as well, using the USB thumb drive as the storage unit? I notice it doesn't have a working keyboard, will it recognize a USB one?

[kriz]

Usb keyboard is supported so apps also should work

[liveevil]

This part on their website concerns me -

Introducing THEA500 Mini, a compact reimagining of the Amiga 500 home computer. Featuring perfect emulation of not only the original A500 but also the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) of the A1200.

Does anyone even know yet what it's using to run games ? I seriously hope it's not Amiberry which doesn't even have Cycle Exact (yet) ! This would make it a very expensive Raspberry Pi case (and an awesome tank mouse!). I can't believe they haven't mentioned what "emulator" it's using. I saw a Youtube video about the Mister, can't remember who, but he showed the Amiga Rink-A-Dink demo and one section had graphical glitches ! Strangely enough, the same demo works perfectly on Retroarch PUAE ! That doesn't really say much for the Cycle Accurate Hardware emulation of the Mister.

[fxgogo]

Modern Vintage Gamer put it well ré the Mister, in that the quality of the hardware emulation is down to the coding of the cores. Most of the cores are in a state of perpetual development, so I guess they will get there eventually.

I doubt they would advertise what form of emulation they are using. It is targeted towards the general consumer of video games rather than us geeks. They don't car as long as they can have a fun time playing old games.

[fxgogo]

I would be very surprised if it is not emulation. I suspect the cost has something to do with licensing.

[Radertified]

It's emulation. I remember reading an interview with someone from Retro Games Ltd. (in Amiga Addict maybe?) where they said it was emulation. Definitely not FPGA.

[Daedalus]

Yep, it's most likely similar to their C64 products, which were ARM based IIRC. A significant proportion of the cost will indeed be licencing, both for the OS and for the included games, and to cover the development and tooling costs for the various parts including the cases.

[midwan]

Originally Posted by liveevil

This part on their website concerns me -



Does anyone even know yet what it's using to run games ? I seriously hope it's not Amiberry which doesn't even have Cycle Exact (yet) ! This would make it a very expensive Raspberry Pi case (and an awesome tank mouse!). I can't believe they haven't mentioned what "emulator" it's using. I saw a Youtube video about the Mister, can't remember who, but he showed the Amiga Rink-A-Dink demo and one section had graphical glitches ! Strangely enough, the same demo works perfectly on Retroarch PUAE ! That doesn't really say much for the Cycle Accurate Hardware emulation of the Mister.

Amiberry does have Cycle-Exact emulation for 68000, actually. It's just somewhat slow if you don't have a fast board, and in most cases it's not even needed to get things running smoothly (with a few exceptions of course).

I don't know what this product is using, and I'd be surprised if it's Amiberry - they mention some features that don't exist in Amiberry:
- CRT filter
- Virtual Keyboard

Furthermore, nobody from Retro Games Ltd has reached out to me about it until now.
So either they made modifications to the code to add the above features, in which case they are obliged by the GPL to release sources to those changes, as well as make it possible for people to modify and update the version it's running, or they are using another emulator altogether.

Or they are in violation of the GPL, of course. Which would be sad, but not very surprising with the history we've seen in Amiga-Land.

[phx]

I read that more games can by added by WHDLoad, which seems included and licensed. But does anybody know how it works (I never used WHDLoad before)? I was under the impression that you need the original disk to patch it and make it available for WHDLoad. But there is certainly no disk drive in the Mini...