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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Apr 08, 2022 5:39 pm

@iljitsch thanks for that honest first take. That's very interesting.

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MattX
Stargard, Poland

Posted Wed Apr 13, 2022 4:09 am

TBH. This is just a waste of everything. Mini Amiga 500 without keyboard. Yeah, you can probably plug external USB one (so what's the point of that case) and yeah there's a 'virtual keyboard'... As an another collector item to collect dust on their hoarded shelves it's just like everything else they have there. It's emulated on an ARM board. You can have more on a RPi4/400 or whatever PC you got at home that can run most popular Linux distros.

The only stuff I'm a bit interested in is that mouse and the joypad. Mouse seems smaller than the original. Why? Is joypad any good and what is the advantage of using it over a modern Dualshock/Xbox style controller? :?

I don't get the hype. It's beyond me...

And the price... :roll: You can get a freaking PS3 cheaper. And PS3 can run Amiga emulator on modified software and PS3 and even PS2 games depending on the model...

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iljitsch

Posted Thu Apr 14, 2022 4:56 am

It's important to understand what this device is: it's not an Amiga. It's a console for running A500 - A1200 era games.

Even once support for running the Workbench is hacked together in a workable way, I don't see how that's a reasonable replacement for either a real Amiga or an emulated Amiga on a more open system. Still, it would be cool to just peruse the 1.3 WB and they really should have included DPaint as one of the "games".

I wasn't impressed by the quality of the included mouse and gamepad. So far they're not bad, but like I said, not impressed. It seems all USB mice work without trouble but third party joysticks are very hit and miss. However, I had no issue replacing the included gamepad with a Logitech F710 wireless gamepad.

If you already have a real or emulated Amiga setup that's to your liking for playing games, you don't need the A500 Mini. But it does have a role where it shines: as a game console you hook up to your TV. Sitting at a desk close to a monitor the low resolution of Amiga games often bothers me (Battle Chess especially!) but sitting on the couch that's much less of an issue.

An advantage of the A500 Mini over a real Amiga, and possibly over an emulated one, is that you can use a game controller and reprogram the buttons per-game.

It seems it's possible to use a CD32 controller with an Amiga, but I'm not entirely sure. For the "Attack of the PETSCII Robots" game that I recently got, this has the benefit that it's possible to run in one direction and fire in another direction.

The A500 Mini will handle this out of the box by emulating a CD32 controller. It also lets you attach mouse or keyboard actions to the controller buttons. So this is nice for games where you mostly use a joystick but there's also a small number of keyboard keys that you'll want to have quick access to.

BTW, not sure if it's always been there, but there's informartion about how to play each game on the RetroGames website. It even explains the rules of (battle) chess. :P

And an update to the WHDLoader install package that "fixes occasional black-screen display".

So I am warming up a bit to the device, but I agree no hype is necessary.

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iljitsch

Posted Thu Apr 14, 2022 5:11 am

Another thought: I got the C64 Mini back in 2019 I think, and I definitely liked that one. It has many more games than the A500 Mini and no additional WHDLoad-like complications if you want to add your own games. (However, a more complex way to adjust settings such as which joystick port is used.)

Now in theory the C64 Mini is basically a full Commodore 64. Just get a USB hub, hook up a keyboard and a flash drive, and you're in business. But it practice it doesn't feel that way.

Then I got the C64 Maxi. (I think I have a problem...) That one only adds a couple of USB ports and a real keyboard, but somehow using the C64 Maxi feels like (my memories of) using a real C64. I even played around with BASIC for a bit here and there, for instance typing in the SID example program from page 95 of the C64 User Manual that is somehow still in my possession after almost four decades.

And the A500 Mini is definitely a more limited implementation of an Amiga than the C64 Mini is of a C64.

Some people have been talking about an A500 Maxi. I don't really see the point... But then I have two working Amigas.

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MattX
Stargard, Poland

Posted Thu Apr 14, 2022 6:47 am

And this is the main problem with it: "it's a console playing Amiga games". It's like stripping down the Amiga experience into a 'whack-a-mole' game. People are so braindead now it's beyond me. They even can't search a forum for like half an hour to make something work. They are like: "I wan't to play Amiga games and stuff, but I'm so scared to configure an emulator". Yeah. It's a rocket science, top secret industry known only for people that can't get through the door because they brains are too big, so they sit in a server room their whole life and drink energy drinks and eat instant soup without water.

:lol: :|

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iljitsch

Posted Thu Apr 14, 2022 7:27 am

Well, if that's what they want, isn't it a good thing that there is a product that lets them do that? I don't see how that would be a bad thing for people who want different Amiga-things.

That whole forum searching thing makes it sound easy, though. I had huge problems getting WHDLoad to work on my A1200. Turns out, if you have a network card running then WHDLoad doesn't work. It actually says so in a corner of their website after I found that out myself.

The stupid thing is that WHDLoad actually uses the network to check for new versions! And then predictably dies without telling the user there could be a problem.

But then if you're still trying to do new stuff on an actual Amiga this day and age a bunch of trial and error and online searching is par for the course...

User avatar
mariopola

Posted Wed Apr 20, 2022 4:05 am

We are making works this adapter for a500 mini joysticks db9 serial like the original Amiga Albatros (the best one, pure perfection) , megadrive pad, quickshot etc...
WhatsApp Image 2022-04-20 at 13.00.40.jpeg

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Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Thu Jun 02, 2022 6:39 am

Anyone else on here buy one of these? I received mine from Amazon US yesterday and indeed the box is tiny. I have not had time to open it yet and not really in a rush since I already own several Amigas and these sort of mini consoles to me are just for tinkering around with as I usually put them on my desk at work. Retro Games LTD does a really good job with these, IMHO.

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iljitsch

Posted Fri Jun 03, 2022 5:22 am

One tip: upgrade the firmware. This way, you get ADF support so you can run any Amiga software that you have disk images for.

It's a great little device if you want to play Amiga games on a TV. Just hook up HDMI and power and you're off to the races. Use a real Amiga for anything else.





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