The A500 Mini

[subcon959]

Let the speculation begin...

 

[Magnus87]

OMG, I really didn't expect this!

I had to settle for a C64 mini since in Argentina it is very difficult to import things and what arrives here, they sell much more expensive!. I was recently in Europe and I wanted to buy the A500 but no physical store had it. So I'll wait for the actual size review.


Maybe the "new mini" console is simply an A500 with the casing of an Amiga 1000/2000/3000.

 

[SylverReZ]

Let the speculation begin...

I didn't expect this to happen at all. I suppose with every mini console that comes out, they are based on similar specs to past generations. It would be super awesome if somebody could run RetroArch on these.

OMG, I really didn't expect this!

I had to settle for a C64 mini since in Argentina it is very difficult to import things and what arrives here, they sell much more expensive!. I was recently in Europe and I wanted to buy the A500 but no physical store had it. So I'll wait for the actual size review.


Maybe the "new mini" console is simply an A500 with the casing of an Amiga 1000/2000/3000.

Me neither. I'm in the UK, it seems that they tend to sell out pretty quickly. Its a good thing that they added a USB port to add our own games. But when the A500 Mini came out, somebody managed to get Amiga Workbench running.

 

[Foxi4]

Me neither. I'm in the UK, it seems that they tend to sell out pretty quickly. Its a good thing that they added a USB port to add our own games. But when the A500 Mini came out, somebody managed to get Amiga Workbench running.

You can get the C64 Mini from game for 25 quid.

https://www.game.co.uk/en/m/the-c64-mini-2107239

They also have A500 Minis for 90.

https://www.game.co.uk/en/m/the-a500-mini-2865839

They’re both considerably cheaper than the release pricing, in case you’re still interested.

 

[SylverReZ]

You can get the C64 Mini from game for 25 quid.

https://www.game.co.uk/en/m/the-c64-mini-2107239

They also have A500 Minis for 90.

https://www.game.co.uk/en/m/the-a500-mini-2865839

They’re both considerably cheaper than the release pricing, in case you’re still interested.

That's neat. Thank you for linking me those. I'm still trying to get my hands on an Evercade, IF they are still available for a cheaper price.

 

[Foxi4]

That's neat. Thank you for linking me those. I'm still trying to get my hands on an Evercade, IF they are still available for a cheaper price.

GAME has those, albeit only in-store from what I can tell. My local GAME was sitting on 3 when I was looking for one myself. You wouldn’t expect them to carry “Neo retro” stuff, but they do.

 

[SylverReZ]

GAME has those, albeit only in-store from what I can tell. My local GAME was sitting on 3 when I was looking for one myself. You wouldn’t expect them to carry “Neo retro” stuff, but they do.

Neo retro stuff? As in Neo Geo?

 

[Foxi4]

Neo retro stuff? As in Neo Geo?

As in new products that imitate old ones, although they did do a range of Neo Geo back, both the mini arcade machine and the Neo Geo Gold.

 

[SylverReZ]

As in new products that imitate old ones, although they did do a range of Neo Geo back, both the mini arcade machine and the Neo Geo Gold.

The Neo Geo X was something of its own, leading up to SNK to tell Tommo to cease making them, because they were shitty emulation devices. You can easily hack them with a modified microSD adapter, because all they're literally doing is swapping one of the pins over as a cheap form of copy protection.

 

[Foxi4]

The Neo Geo X was something of its own, leading up to SNK to tell Tommo to cease making them, because they were shitty emulation devices. You can easily hack them with a modified microSD adapter, because all they're literally doing is swapping one of the pins over as a cheap form of copy protection.

I wouldn’t know, never owned one. Not hugely into imitation consoles, I’d rather just own the original, but some of them are vaguely interesting items.

 

[SylverReZ]

I wouldn’t know, never owned one. Not hugely into imitation consoles, I’d rather just own the original, but some of them are vaguely interesting items.

I never owned one either. I've seen videos of them on YouTube, one in particular being from Ashens. They've stolen the emulator to Final Burn Alpha of which they violated their license by making profits off the emulator. Still, nonetheless, they are really interesting to look back at its history.

 

[Foxi4]

I never owned one either. I've seen videos of them on YouTube, one in particular being from Ashens. They've stolen the emulator to Final Burn Alpha of which they violated the GPL license by making profits off the emulator. Still, nonetheless, they are really interesting to look back at its history.

The GPL license doesn’t preclude one from making a profit. There must’ve been some other infraction, more likely than not they haven’t included the mandatory license file/s or they haven’t made the source code available to the public, both of those things are a requirement under GPL.

 

[SylverReZ]

The GPL license doesn’t preclude one from making a profit. There must’ve been some other infraction, more likely than not they haven’t included the mandatory license file/s or they haven’t made the source code available to the public, both of those things are a requirement under GPL.

*correction: FBA's license

"You may not sell, lease, rent or otherwise seek to gain monetary profit from FB Alpha;"

And that is exactly what Tommo did, it runs on a port of the Final Burn Alpha emulator that's so tad poor on the hardware itself.

 

[subcon959]

It's gonna be very disappointing if it's just the same as the A500 mini but in a new A600 shell or something like that.

 

[subcon959]

Aaand... It's The400 Mini...

It comes with the old Atari CX style joystick and 25 games including Berzerk, Boulder Dash, Capture the Flag, Lee, Millipede, Miner 2049er, Missile Command, M.U.L.E, Star Raiders II and Yoomp!

I personally have no nostalgia for this machine so I'll probably be skipping it.

https://retrogames.biz/products/the400-mini/

 

[qzack]

You can easily hack them with a modified microSD adapter, because all they're literally doing is swapping one of the pins over as a cheap form of copy protection.

You've got my attention. I own one of these things. Replaced the screen on the handheld a couple months ago because it had lines throughout and didn't work right. I now have a better working unit but the one thing I've always wanted to do was update the firmware. TMK the only way to do this was to buy the expansion packs that come with a "Rocket Cable" that plugs into the console to allow the firmware to be copied. Is their anyway to do this procedure with a modified SD-Card? I have plenty of shells lying around and wouldn't mind butchering one if I knew it worked. These are also selling for way more now than they went for back in the day. I ran across just the handheld up for sale without the dock or controller for $200...Hard Pass.

 

[SylverReZ]

The only way to do this was to buy the expansion packs that come with a "Rocket Cable" that plugs into the console to allow the firmware to be copied. Is their anyway to do this procedure with a modified SD-Card?

Yes. You need to download Win32DiskImager and the jailbreak image ("JailBreak_V0.4-5-gecf6931.img"). The image can be found by searching Google, since I cannot link it here for reasons.

You use W32DiskImager to flash the image onto something like a 2GB microSD card (not the adapter with the SD inserted), insert the modified card adapter into your NGX with the microSD in there along with the Rocket Cable, and perform the upgrade steps.

 

[subcon959]

I'm a little concerned that sales of the Atari 400 mini are going to be so poor that it makes them reconsider the other planned releases.

Why on earth did they choose the 400 over everything else.

 

[SylverReZ]

I'm a little concerned that sales of the Atari 400 mini are going to be so poor that it makes them reconsider the other planned releases.

Why on earth did they choose the 400 over everything else.

The Atari VCS is quite interesting; it runs a custom version of Debian, so I bet you could turn this into a functioning everyday computer.