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minimig-mist

This is a port of the minimig core to the MiST board.

minimig (short for Mini Amiga) is an open source re-implementation of an Amiga using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Original minimig author is Dennis van Weeren.

Amiga was - in my opinion - an amazing personal computer, announced around 1984, which - at the time - far surpassed any other personal computer on the market, with advanced graphic & sound capabilities, not to mention its great OS with preemptive multitasking capabilities.

The minimig-mist variant in this repository has been upgraded with AGA chipset capabilites, which allows it to emulate the latest Amiga models (Amiga 1200, Amiga 4000 and (partially) Amiga CD32). Ofcourse it also supports previous OCS/ECS Amigas like Amiga 500, Amiga 600 etc.

Core features supported

  • chipset variants : OCS, ECS, AGA
  • chipRAM : 0.5MB - 2.0MB
  • slowRAM : 0.0MB - 1.5MB
  • fastRAM : 0.0MB - 24MB
  • CPU core : 68000, 68010, 68020
  • kickstart : 1.2 - 3.1 (256kB, 512kB & 1MB kickstart ROMs currently supported)
  • HRTmon with custom registers mirror
  • floppy disks : 1-4 floppies (supports ADF floppy image format), with normal & turbo speeds
  • hard disks : 1-2 hard disk images (supports whole disk images, partition images, using whole SD card and using SD card partition)
  • video standard : PAL / NTSC
  • supports normal & scandoubled video output (15kHz / 30kHz) - can be used with a monitor or a TV with a SCART cable
  • peripherals : real Amiga mice, real Amiga joysticks, USB keyboards, USB mice, USB gamepads, MIDI in / out
  • could potentially support anything that can be connected to USB (ethernet, RTC, USB Flash, ...)

Usage

Hardware

To use this minimig core on the MiST board, you will at the minimum need an SD/SDHC card, formatted with the FAT32 filesystem, an USB keyboard and a compatible monitor / TV. Joysticks & mouse can be emulated on the keyboard. You will probably want to attach a set of speakers of headphones, a real Amiga or USB mouse and a real Amiga joystick or an USB gamepad. The MiST board is needed too, of course ;)

Software

FPGA core releases can be found here. The latest release available is minimig-mist-1_2. The zip file contains a minimig-mist-1_2.rbf file, which is the FPGA core, and a firmware.upg file, which can be used to upgrade the firmware on the ARM microcontroller (usually, there is no need to upgrade the firmware, unless it is specifically mentioned to do so). Both files should be placed on the root of your SD card. If you want this core to be the default, you need to rename it to core.rbf.

To use the core, you will also need a Kickstart ROM image file, which you can obtain by copying Kickstart ROM IC from your actual Amiga, or by buying an Amiga Forever software pack. The Kickstart image should be placed on the root of the SD card with the name KICK.ROM. Minimig also supports the AROS kickstart ROM replacement.

The minimig can read any ADF floppy images you place on the SD card. I recommend at least Workbench 1.3 or 3.1 (AmigaOS), some of the Amigas great games (I recommend Ruff'n'Tumble) or some of the amazing demos from the vast Amiga demoscene (like State of the Art from Spaceballs).

The minimig can also use HDF harddisk images, which can be created with WinUAE.

Recommended minimig config

  • for ECS games / demos : CPU = 68000, Turbo=NONE, Chipset=ECS, chipRAM=0.5MB, slowRAM=0.5MB, Kickstart 1.3
  • for AGA games / demos : CPU = 68020, Turbo=NONE, Chipset=AGA, chipRAM=2MB, slowRAM=0MB, fastRAM=24MB, Kickstart 3.1 For Workbench usage, you can try turning TURBO=BOTH for a little speed increase.

Controlling minimig

Keyboard special keys:

  • F12 - OSD menu
  • F11 - start monitor (HRTmon) if HRTmon is enabled in OSD menu (otherwise F11 is the Amiga HELP key)
  • ScrollLock - toggle keyoard only / mouse / joystick 1 / joystick 2 emulation on the keyboard (direction keys + LCTRL)

Issues & Bug reports

All issues for this project are tracked on this repository's Issues page.

If you are a Github user, you can report any issues or bugs directly here.

In case you don't have an account, you can use this link.

Development notes

All development on this repository is done on the dev branch, or a branch forked from dev. Master branch contains only release-ready, stable changes. All stable releases are tagged with a tag minimig-mist-release_version.

See Changelog here.

See TODO list here.

Building minimig-mist from sources

  • checkout the source using this link (or alternatively, download source zip file)
  • download / install / build an ARM GCC toolchain (install script here, or alternatively, download an already build arm-none-eabi-gcc package for you operating system - requires support for ARM7TDMI)
  • download / install Altera Quartus II (latest supported version for Cyclone III FPGA device used on the MiST board is 13.1; I'm still using version 10.1SP1)
  • if you are using linux and have the $PATH variable properly set up, you can use the Makefile in the root of the project, otherwise build the ARM firmware using your favourite tool / GUI (firmware is in fw/mist), and build the core using Quartus GUI (project file in fpga/mist)
  • place the firmware.upg & minimig-mist.rbf files on the root of your SD card (optionally, rename minimig-mist.rbf to core.rbf to make it the default core)
  • don't forget to place kickstart ROM of your choosing on the root of the SD card (these are still copyrighted, so either copy the ROM from your real Amiga, or buy AmigaForever)
  • place some ADF (floppy disk images) of your favourite games / demos / programs on your SD card
  • optionally place minimig.bal, minimig.art & minimig.cop files on the root of your SD card for a nice bootup animation
  • enjoy minimig! :)

Sources

This sourcecode is based on my previous project (minimig-de1), and it continues from there. It was split into a new project to allow changes that would never fit in the FPGA on the DE1 board.

Original minimig sources from Dennis van Weeren with updates by Jakub Bednarski are published on Google Code.

Some minimig updates are published on the Minimig Discussion Forum, done by Sascha Boing.

ARM firmware updates and minimig-tc64 port changes by Christian Vogelsang (minimig_tc64) and A.M. Robinson (minimig_tc64).

MiST board & firmware by Till Harbaum (MiST).

TG68K.C core by Tobias Gubener.

Links & more info

My page somuch.guru.

Further info about minimig can be found on the Minimig Discussion Forum.

MiST board support & other cores on the MiST Project Page.

License

Copyright © 2011 - 2016 Rok Krajnc ([email protected])

Copyright © 2005 - 2015 Dennis van Weeren, Jakub Bednarski, Sascha Boing, A.M. Robinson, Tobias Gubener, Till Harbaum

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.