THEA500 Mini has been announced via Retro Games Ltd. and distributed by Koch Media

Guest2 · 27 Mar 2022 at 11:15

Cavallino said:
Ah cheers for that. I snagged my stik off ebay last night... it said it was a refurbished one/cleaned etc. Lets see!
In the meantime I need to sit down and sort out WinUAE.... I never realised you could load games from within the amiga environment rather than using Winuae to find the game and load it manually.

That's the huge plus of WinUAE / other software instead of the A500 mini.
You create a hard drive 'hardfile' any size you want and add directories linked to folders on your PC. On mine I have DH0 - 400Mb for Workbench OS, PC0 for system files, DH1 for games, DH2 for demos. You then can easily transfer things on your PC which show in the Workbench OS.
You can also mount ADF files in WinUAE which show up in Workbench, excatly like they would on an A1200.
Then there's the expansions, you can add an endless list of expansions like RTG graphics cards, ISA soundcards, PCI GPUs, SCSI, IDE and many other controllers. As long as you have the ROMs, you can also add accelerator boards to make it a power pc (PPC) e.g. Cyberstorm, Blizzard and Warp engine even a virtual Voodoo 3 3dfx card can be added. As long as you know what you're doing the list is endless.
However it's not as simple sometimes as selecting a dropdown and hoping it works, it's a computer remember so adding something like an RTG board requires the Workbench OS drivers and maybe other software. Adding PPC cards will require the correct drivers, e.g. WarpUP and Warp3D drivers

An example of what an A1200 is capable of (I never knew) All which can be emulated of course (though not on the A500 mini!)

Some of the config and settings for what i'm talking about. It doesnt go into the Workbench and driver setup, just WinUAE screens

Cavallino · 27 Mar 2022 at 11:43

Cheers again G2.
Is that Wipeout for the Amiga? Or is a Playstation emulation?

Ill need to research how you setup all this stuff on your PC like separate drives in the Workbench OS....

Guest2 · 27 Mar 2022 at 11:46

Cavallino said:
Cheers again G2.
Is that Wipeout for the Amiga? Or is a Playstation emulation?

Ill need to research how you setup all this stuff on your PC like separate drives in the Workbench OS....

Wipeout for the Amiga on an A1200 (actual A1200 hardware which has been upgraded)

Running through this great set of tutorials is the best to start IMO

Cavallino · 27 Mar 2022 at 12:00

Thanks bud. Blimey... I didnt realise Wipeout came to the A1200, thats impressive....

Cheers for the guides. Im going to sit down one evening and configure it all properly.... cant wait for the ZipStik to arrive

E: I ordered the A500mini also as I built up a little collection of the Mini consoles, didnt seem right not exclude the good old Amiga which I have the best memories of playing during my child hood!

Guest2 · 27 Mar 2022 at 12:04

Cavallino said:
Thanks bud. Blimey... I didnt realise Wipeout came to the A1200, thats impressive....

Cheers for the guides. Im going to sit down one evening and configure it all properly.... cant wait for the ZipStik to arrive

E: I ordered the A500mini also as I built up a little collection of the Mini consoles, didnt seem right not exclude the good old Amiga which I have the best memories of playing during my child hood!

Good stuff. I'll help with questions if you have any. I too have lots but its more around getting an 060 working, which probably needs other config / options to work. 060 isnt needed anyway, im just curious.
Id have kept my A500 mini order too, if I had the space. I need to sell some stuff first

Timber · 8 Apr 2022 at 18:57

Did anyone take delivery of one today?

I got the mouse on its own for my MiSTer and it's....OK. They've made it smaller which is a shame and I'll be honest the build quality and plastics don't feel great. On my Windows 11 desktop the mouse was awful, with the sensor missing movement on my mouse mat. However on MiSTer it's fine and I think it completes the look for a retro-themed setup.

unKle · 8 Apr 2022 at 19:01

Still waiting on mine, should be here soon, although I'm off to work soon so I'll be tinkering with it at the weekend, can't wait

Ravenger · 8 Apr 2022 at 19:24

Got mine today, and I've just had a play.

Overall it's a pretty neat device. Many of the included games aren't amazing, but you can load your own so that's not too bad.
The included gamepad is actually not bad. The buttons feel pretty nice, and it works well enough in most of the games I've tried.
I'm a bit disappointed with the mouse as the texture and plastics feel off compared to the original, but again it works well enough.
Loading games via WHDLoad is easy, and the A500 mini saves out WinUAE config files for those you change the settings for.
The little LED lights work just like the original Amiga which is a really nice touch - you can see the drive LED flash while loading.
I do miss a keyboard though, so I'll be using mine with a USB keyboard, though I'll have to add a hub to have mouse, joystick, keyboard and USB installed. It could have done with an extra USB port like the C64 Maxi.
One thing I miss is I used to have my A1000 on my Midi Stereo system so the small portable TV's speakers I'm using don't cut it at all. So I'm using headphones, but that's not the fault of the A500 Mini - even back in the day you needed decent speakers to do the sound justice, unlike the C64.
Oh, I read today that the developers have said they're going to be adding ADF support, which will make it easier to use as a 'real' Amiga with workbench.

This has got me a hankering for is to convert some of my personal Amiga files over, but looks like I'll need to dig out my A1000 for that as PCs can't read Amiga disks, and that then depends on my A1000 and the various disks I have working, which is why I got an A500 mini in the first place :rolleyes:

Guest2 · 8 Apr 2022 at 20:39

Ravenger said:
This has got me a hankering for is to convert some of my personal Amiga files over, but looks like I'll need to dig out my A1000 for that as PCs can't read Amiga disks, and that then depends on my A1000 and the various disks I have working, which is why I got an A500 mini in the first place

You could search and find the adfs of the disk you have. That’s what i did with the games I owned (and workbench)
Unless there are personal files or something, most things are easy to find.
A number of Amiga titles are now freeware too

Ravenger · 8 Apr 2022 at 21:17

Guest2 said:
You could search and find the adfs of the disk you have. That’s what i did with the games I owned (and workbench)
Unless there are personal files or something, most things are easy to find.
A number of Amiga titles are now freeware too

It mainly some few personal files I never brought across at the time, plus a load of demo disks which I could probably find online if I could remember what they're called!

One very annoying thing about the A500 Mini is if you use TheC64 joystick, or a Kempston USB only the right fire button acts as the main joystick button and there appears to be no way to remap this. As I'm left handed I use the left fire button :mad:

It needs an option to either remap a standard joystick or to swap the first two buttons.

Guest2 · 8 Apr 2022 at 22:07

Ravenger said:
It mainly some few personal files I never brought across at the time, plus a load of demo disks which I could probably find online if I could remember what they're called!

One very annoying thing about the A500 Mini is if you use TheC64 joystick, or a Kempston USB only the right fire button acts as the main joystick button and there appears to be no way to remap this. As I'm left handed I use the left fire button

It needs an option to either remap a standard joystick or to swap the first two buttons.

Ive got a one of these adapters and a Zipstick - https://monsterjoysticks.com/9-pin-joystick-to-usb-adapter
On the Zipstick both bottons are mapped to fire for left and right handed people. I'm right handed but use the left fire button with left hand and control joystick with the right (I thought that was the standard way right handed poeple use joysticks, could be wrong)

Ravenger · 8 Apr 2022 at 22:29

Guest2 said:
Ive got a one of these adapters and a Zipstick - https://monsterjoysticks.com/9-pin-joystick-to-usb-adapter
On the Zipstick both bottons are mapped to fire for left and right handed people. I'm right handed but use the left fire button with left hand and control joystick with the right (I thought that was the standard way right handed poeple use joysticks, could be wrong)

You may be right, in which case it's even more bonkers that the fire buttons are setup incorrectly.

Timber · 8 Apr 2022 at 22:34

Ravenger said:
One very annoying thing about the A500 Mini is if you use TheC64 joystick, or a Kempston USB only the right fire button acts as the main joystick button and there appears to be no way to remap this. As I'm left handed I use the left fire button

Ouch. Although good to read the good thoughts on the Mini. Lots of posts today on various forums so hopefully it is selling well.

I did see the post from the manual on Resetera explaining how joypads are setup although the reports of working joysticks is very small out of the gate (The C64 stick, DS3 & DS4). I've no doubt RGL will work on that as they did such a stellar job with C64 Mini/Maxi support.

Guest2 said:
Ive got a one of these adapters and a Zipstick - https://monsterjoysticks.com/9-pin-joystick-to-usb-adapter
On the Zipstick both bottons are mapped to fire for left and right handed people. I'm right handed but use the left fire button with left hand and control joystick with the right (I thought that was the standard way right handed poeple use joysticks, could be wrong)

It is, as a right hander I use the left fire button. As an aside WinUAE has always done that by default for me. Maps the fire button to the right button on my USB Competition Pro.

Guest2 · 9 Apr 2022 at 00:28

Timber said:
Ouch. Although good to read the good thoughts on the Mini. Lots of posts today on various forums so hopefully it is selling well.

I did see the post from the manual on Resetera explaining how joypads are setup although the reports of working joysticks is very small out of the gate (The C64 stick, DS3 & DS4). I've no doubt RGL will work on that as they did such a stellar job with C64 Mini/Maxi support.

It is, as a right hander I use the left fire button. As an aside WinUAE has always done that by default for me. Maps the fire button to the right button on my USB Competition Pro.

I thought on the comp pro stick the right button is the fire button or they are swapped over or something. It was one of the complaints people had with it and remember someone detailing how to rewire it so left button is button 1.
Instead of all that faff I just bought a Zipstick and adapter

Timber · 9 Apr 2022 at 00:48

Guest2 said:
I thought on the comp pro stick the right button is the fire button or they are swapped over or something. It was one of the complaints people had with it and remember someone detailing how to rewire it so left button is button 1.
Instead of all that faff I just bought a Zipstick and adapter

Yea it's a modern driver issue (I think). If you plug the USB Comp Pro into Windows or Linux it's a 4 button + 8-way stick. And that's why in WinUAE or Amiberry it maps the fire button to the right button only. Just seeing the situation with the A500 Mini reminded me of that. It's very easy to remap so all the fire buttons are the same like an original stick. Although I imagine it's a cool mod to re-solder or re-wire the two buttons too.

Ravenger · 9 Apr 2022 at 08:18

It isn't the case on TheC64 or C64Mini for me though.
That has the main fire button on the left on both the bundled joystick and my USB Kempston.

Seems weird it'd operate differently on the A500 Mini.

Timber · 9 Apr 2022 at 08:49

Ravenger said:
It isn't the case on TheC64 or C64Mini for me though.
That has the main fire button on the left on both the bundled joystick and my USB Kempston.

Seems weird it'd operate differently on the A500 Mini.

Yep. Although the C64 Mini/Maxi work with a larger range of controllers than the A500 Mini currently does. I thought (maybe wrongly) that all of these would be a Linux based setup using Vice 64/UAE for the emulation part. Therefore I/O would be really expansive as Linux works with loads of controllers. But maybe it is a bare metal setup and therefore RGL has to manually program controllers to work, or they have locked it down somehow. Given they did add to C64 Mini/Maxi controllers (i.e. recently the new Mouse and Joypad for the A500 Mini were added to the THEC64 compatibility), they probably will add controllers or more remapping options at some point.

Probably just something they missed or wasn't a priority to have working at release.

Ravenger · 9 Apr 2022 at 13:24

I found a cheap wireless keyboard in a trade-in store today, (only a fiver) and it works a treat on the A500 mini. Amazing how it feels more like a 'real' Amiga when you can use a keyboard for the software that uses it. I'd prefer something more like the original styling (basically old IBM type) but they're much more expensive.

Ravenger · 10 Apr 2022 at 18:59

BTW, there's a workaround for the bad joystick mapping on TheC64 Joystick, but it only works for WHDLoad games.
Turns out you can swap the buttons around, but you have remap using CD32 controller mappings, and simply swap the blue and the red buttons around.

Short video here by the YouTuber who found this trick:

Aegis · 11 Apr 2022 at 09:07

Ravenger said:
This has got me a hankering for is to convert some of my personal Amiga files over, but looks like I'll need to dig out my A1000 for that as PCs can't read Amiga disks, and that then depends on my A1000 and the various disks I have working, which is why I got an A500 mini in the first place

There's a couple of devices - the GreaseWeazle (great name) and the DrawBridge that allow PC floppy drives to read Amiga floppies (even copy protected ones) - there's also the KryoFlux which I believe is more versatile but is also more expensive. The DrawBridge is probably the most user friendly, but the developer has had issues getting hold of the components needed to make them which means there's quite a waiting list.

I have a GreaseWeazle, so if you'd like some of your Amiga disks converted to ADFs, just send me a message.

https://www.retropassion.co.uk/product/greaseweazle/

https://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk

https://kryoflux.com