Amiga A500 Mini

[badaids]

Used to love playing Kick Off 2 with friends from school. You'd play a 40 minute match and get scorelines of 18-12. Plus if you got a vindictive ref like I. Ball you'd end up with about 6 players on the pitch.
I, of course, got to use the Zipstick. The other player had to use whatever shit I had as a backup.

Nothing better than lining up a sliding tackle on Kick Off 2. I loved the way the camera would follow the player until the whistle went and then tracked back to the original offence. If you did it right it would be half the pitch. And the management sim version Player Manager was incredible too. Used to love playing on at left back into my 80s so I could carry on controlling the on pitch action.

And I can't believe I've never googled Dino Dino it's creator. I'm off to do that now - I hope he made his millions from it. Kick Off 2 was better than sensible I think.

[thehungerartist]

How much would something like this cost, and how difficult is it to set up the hardware and software?

I paid £97.99 for a Pi 400 in November last year. Already had a few MicroSD cards of varying capacities kicking round so saved a couple of quid there: a different one for each OS (Twister is a cool idea but less practical than it appears).

Setting up the hardware is as complex as rigging up a modern games console, and the software (Pimiga Fully Loaded) was piss easy by usual Amiga emulation standards.

Have owned Pis in the past for tinkering, seedboxes and 8/16-bit emulation but this is a proper computer.

[Johnny Textface]

The demoscene was incredible on the Amiga.. 1988-1994ish.Pushing those hardware limits and being creative with like minded friends. Great times.

[ImmaculateClump]

I used these, christ know why because they were dogshit. Forever dropping inputs or just failing entirely.



My friend had this really cool one that was more like a console pad and shaped like motorbike handlebars. Coolest thing I'd ever seen at the time!

Also Amiga emulation is a fuck-ache

Is it? I don't remember it being that bad. A bit unintuitive perhaps, having to mount the disks and shit, but once you'd figured it out, you were flying.

Kick off 2 was too hard for me. Too fiddly.
Yeah man, Speedball 2 was amazing!
I really liked knights of the sky, I got really into that one. I would play that all day sometimes.

[badaids]

I paid £97.99 for a Pi 400 in November last year. Already had a few MicroSD cards of varying capacities kicking round so saved a couple of quid there: a different one for each OS (Twister is a cool idea but less practical than it appears).

Setting up the hardware is as complex as rigging up a modern games console, and the software (Pimiga Fully Loaded) was piss easy by usual Amiga emulation standards.

Have owned Pis in the past for tinkering, seedboxes and 8/16-bit emulation but this is a proper computer.

Thanks for this - just what I needed.

[badaids]

I used these, christ know why because they were dogshit. Forever dropping inputs or just failing entirely.



My friend had this really cool one that was more like a console pad and shaped like motorbike handlebars. Coolest thing I'd ever seen at the time!



Is it? I don't remember it being that bad. A bit unintuitive perhaps, having to mount the disks and shit, but once you'd figured it out, you were flying.

Kick off 2 was too hard for me. Too fiddly.
Yeah man, Speedball 2 was amazing!
I really liked knights of the sky, I got really into that one. I would play that all day sometimes.

Yes those quick shots were terrible.  In those days, generally, the flashier looking the joystick the shitter it was. 

I never got a copy of Knights of the Sky that worked, but Wings was just about the best game I've ever played.

[Cold Meat Platter]

I never got a copy of Knights of the Sky that worked, but Wings was just about the best game I've ever played.

The did a remake of wings a few years ago but not sure how faithful it was. The 'updated' graphics looked a bit ugly.

[badaids]

The did a remake of wings a few years ago but not sure how faithful it was. The 'updated' graphics looked a bit ugly.

I'll have to check that our, the original is such a good game.

[Cloud]

That was my exact point, yep. Always cheer whenever anyone mentions Raspberry Pi in the context of these retro consoles.

I'm not knocking emulation at all, I just always look forward to seeing the comment.

An inevitable comment because you get much more value for money having what is usually an equally or more powerful ARM chip running the same emulator, except you have the flexibility to install other emulators or other things entirely

There's nothing wrong with wanting and paying a premium for a replica case and pre-installed emulator, just know that that's what you're getting :)

Unless, indeed, it's FPGA based. I doubt it, I remember the price of Minimigs!

[Chedney Honks]

It's just such a boring, inane comment.

"Why would you go to a restaurant when you can just cook the same food at home for less money?"

Yeah, all right, mate.

"Why do something nice for your birthday when you, your friends, your family, everyone you know and everyone you don't know are going to die?"

[Cloud]

More like "Ah this restaurant is charging £30 to microwave a 99p frozen pizza and serve it on an authentic Italian plate, I think I'd rather just pay 99p to microwave my own 99p frozen pizza at home even if the plate is a bit plain, but to each their own"

If it wasn't a frozen pizza (emulator) and actually a good one (FPGA) then it'd probably be worth heading out for and get fewer of such comments

[madhair60]

why doesn't the casual "oh i remember the Amiga" fan simply purchase and assemble a small, bespoke computer, flash a custom OS to it then manually configure it?

[Chedney Honks]

More like "Ah this restaurant is charging £30 to microwave a 99p frozen pizza and serve it on an authentic Italian plate, I think I'd rather just pay 99p to microwave my own 99p frozen pizza at home even if the plate is a bit plain, but to each their own"

If it wasn't a frozen pizza (emulator) and actually a good one (FPGA) then it'd probably be worth heading out for and get fewer of such comments

No, it's exactly like I said, or I would have just given your analogy.

[Neomod]

Kick off 2 was too hard for me. Too fiddly.

Kick Off took some getting used to if you were a player of Sensible Soccer (game changer on the c64) but once you got to grips with it it was su-pwerb!

Another vote for Wings, probably my favourite Cinemaware 'game'.

[Chedney Honks]

I'm running Linux

I subscribe to Digital Foundry

I've got an SSD

I've got Microsoft Game Pass

I'm running a Chia farm off my overdraft

I've got 41TB of illicit imagery off the Dark Web

I'm playing Treasure Island Dizzy on my ultra wide monitor

[The Culture Bunker]

I did get the Wings remake from a few years back. Was enough fun to be worth the cost - Waldo P Barnstormer rides again.

Think the most played game on my Amiga 600 would have been Midwinter 2 - put some serious hours into that one, though Elite 2 got a lot of time invested too.

[Sebastian Cobb]

on second thoughts that's overly grumpy on my part 😂😂😂

[Chedney Honks]

No, I have no interest in buying one of these, same as any of the other mini consoles.

😂😂😂

[Zetetic]

There's nothing wrong with wanting and paying a premium for a replica case

Perhaps not in theory, but it's not like we're looking at something that tells a story or encapsulates an era. It's the dullest thoughtless copy-cat wedge imaginable, and I think that's part of what's making it hard for some people - for whom there isn't a deeply held visceral connection to first erections and god-knows what else - to understand the attraction.

(Contrast with some of Acorn's designs or the Snow White designs, for example, for artefacts of roughly the same time.)

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Does the keyboard on it work? It's that diddy you'd probably have to prod the keys with a pen to type.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Fuck off Amiga, Atari ST is the best, proper musicians use it, Amiga is wank! BYE

[MojoJojo]

Does the keyboard on it work? It's that diddy you'd probably have to prod the keys with a pen to type.

If it's like the c64 mini they made before, no. Which is a bit of a concern.

[ImmaculateClump]

Does the keyboard on it work?

No, but apparently you can "plug one in" via usb :S
As Honks says, I can't see the majority of people who'd buy this sort of thing having many spare USB keyboards lying around.

I wonder if the mouse actually works. It's gotta be an optical mouse, hasn't it, surely?
Wow, remember the actual ball ones you had to keep taking out and cleaning the little spinny things inside.
They had to glue them shut at school in the computer rooms because everyone was pinching them and throwing them at each other in the playground :D

[Consignia]

If it's like the c64 mini they made before, no. Which is a bit of a concern.

They did make a full size C64 with working keyboard though didn't they? Maybe there's a route to something like that in the future. Which would be nice, since the orignial is a computer rather than a console.

[MojoJojo]

If it wasn't a frozen pizza (emulator) and actually a good one (FPGA) then it'd probably be worth heading out for and get fewer of such comments

Ah, yeah if it's an arm based emulator fuck it. The previous c64 mini was an fpga I believe. It should be within the reach of an fpga, even a retail one, although translating whatever the original hardware design was done in into something you can program an fpga with might be an issue*.

There's a nerdy link to the rush to get the early amiga prototype working in TTL chips, the fpga of the day.

*Then you've got to work out how to make the floppy drive work, preferably in a way that what trip up copy protection.

[Sebastian Cobb]

They did make a full size C64 with working keyboard though didn't they? Maybe there's a route to something like that in the future. Which would be nice, since the orignial is a computer rather than a console.

There have been c64 soc's/clones over the years so it's likely.

There's a commodore 64 and commodore 65 (only made it to prototype) machine called the mega65 that has a keyboard:
https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/en/Products/MEGA65/

nostalgia nerd has reviewed it on youtube.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Ah, yeah if it's an arm based emulator fuck it. The previous c64 mini was an fpga I believe. It should be within the reach of an fpga, even a retail one, although translating whatever the original hardware design was done in into something you can program an fpga with might be an issue*.

There's a nerdy link to the rush to get the early amiga prototype working in TTL chips, the fpga of the day.

*Then you've got to work out how to make the floppy drive work, preferably in a way that what trip up copy protection.

Looks like the mini was an arm-based thing. But before that there was the C64DTV which housed a c64 in just a joystick, powered by an ASIC designed by Jeri Ellsworth, who also did its predecessor the C-One which was a bigger board (and used fpga's by the looks of it).