Anyways, back to now. I saw Mattsoft's build and fell in love. A proper machine that LOOKED like an Amiga, but had all the modern conveniences - and being a materialistic sort, decided that I simply MUST have one. But alas we live in interesting times, where modern technology shortages and massively inflated prices on vintage stuff have collided. I spent several weeks scouring ebay, local classifieds, and Amibay in search of an A600 case and keyboard. Only managed to find one case, and that was $80 (and was damaged.) The two keyboards I found were $200 or so. Looks like another option needed to be sourced.
Didn't stop me from ordering the MiSTer components, though. DE10-nano ordered from Mouser, and snagged the USB hub, analog IO board, and memory module from good oul' ebay.
Okay, I had two choices. Get a bog standard case for these, attach a keyboard and mouse, and call it a day, or figure out an alternate "Amiga" option. The first one seemed like a copout (and a surefire way of throwing this in a drawer once I was done with it) so off to scour the internet I went. And lo and behold, I found the work of Mr. Lee Smith, who'd come up with a modular case for his MiSTer project. SORTED!
After a bit of thought though, I wanted it a bit more compact and didn't particularly relish the idea of having six 14+ hour prints going, so looked a bit harder and found a solution on Thingiverse. This looked a winner. Downloaded the files, and put the printer to work.
While these were printing, started playing with the MiSTer itself.
I halfheartedly played about a bit with the arcade cores, but there were a few aspects of the case build that were gnawing at me, notably the USB hub. So started experimenting on them in anticipation. First up, I'd need a way to provide power to the hub, without having to have two DC cables coming into the case. That was done simply by piggy backing off the DE10-nano board itself. Soldered a positive and negative wire to the barrel posts on the underside of the board, and added a DC jack to the end. Tossed some hot glue on there to insulate and add a bit of robustness. Job done.
Next up, when the USB hub is installed in the case, it blocks the micro USB input from the DE10. After the fact, I pondered if just hooking any of the USB ports to the micro USB port on the DE10 would have worked, but too late, I soldered a JST connector to the USB hub, and built my own cable. Easy enough.
So with the few logisitical questions done, on we go.
