The A500 Mini
amazon.com
amazon.com
There's no way. This is just a nostalgia-exploiting money grab: Cheapest ARM SoC they could find, a kioskified open source emulator and a small selection of games, in a box that vaguely resembles the Amiga 500.
All of this for "only" $140. What a joke. Save your money. Look at WinUAE, PiMiga and the MiniMig core for miSTer, as an alternative. Or even the real hardware, which would not cost much more than this raw exploitation device.
This is just a cheap ripoff.
It does cost a little more, but not much. Around 150€ in Europe. US might be harder.
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Q: Is the keyboard is non functioning?
A: It is non-functioning Digitaltim| 2 months ago
Q: Is the keyboard good enough to use?
A: The keyboard is non functional. Digitaltim| 2 months ago
Q: Will the keyboard part be fully functional? I'm sure some people may want to try programmi…
A: No, it's just for looks. J. Wood| 2 days ago
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I'm confused, is it something working or not?
OTOH, the physical object of the Amiga isn't that relevant to the experience as the C64 Maxi is, because the original keyboard is very close to a modern generic one. A major annoyance of the mini was that you needed to know a C64 keyboard to use a PC keyboard on it. As a bonus, the Maxi's keyboard is better than the original.
I wish they did the ST too. The ST had a TERRIBLE keyboard.
WHAT? XE series had terrible keyboard, I would kill for ST's one for my venerable 65XE :)
Also, the non-functional keyboard is a little weird. Why even have it?
> Also, the non-functional keyboard is a little weird. Why even have it?
Because it wouldn't look like an Amiga 500 without one?
What. That's actually a pretty cool/thoughtful move. I was going to say that the A500 did a good job of making me wish for an A1200...
If you look at Amiga sites like Lemon Amiga (tangent: still envious of their clean while also detailed and decorative mobile design) there are lots of comments on games that say "best enjoyed as AGA version".
Not even WinUAE has perfect emulation, although at least they are genuinely trying, unlike these crooks.
The perfect AGA claim is insulting. AGA isn't even close to fully understood or documented.
It's like when I buy cost effective ham radio gear off eBay, and the description says the handheld radio puts out 1000W or something. I don't buy consumer- or hobbyist-level gear based on specs or sell sheets alone. I look at the supplier, the photos, the appropriate price range and likely feature set for the product class, and make a guess at how bad it could be. Then I ask if it would still be fun or interesting at half that good. Have never been disappointed.
I would treat a sub-$500 retroclone Amiga like a souped-up handheld retro console and expect to happily suffer through the obvious set of flaws while getting in some gaming time. To me it's special that they include even a layer of AGA compatibility, whether we call that a single extra lazy drag and drop or an internal specification complication driven by the passionate desire to include something resembling a fps game :-)
I would suggest running WinUAE on a PC, PiMiga on a Raspberry Pi, or minimig on miSTer. Perhaps even contributing to these projects in some way or another.
Better than giving away your hard-earned money to some crooks that sell a very overpriced emulator-in-a-box (they didn't even write the emulator, obviously), running on some cheap hardware and exploiting the nostalgia of some suckers by making the box resemble an Amiga 500, all the while lying about their product's specifications.
It's a shame that what once was the "UNIX Amiga Emulator" is pretty much abandoned, and the most active fork focuses on Windows.
But I have the hardware and use it. My A1200 is running right now.
> Is the keyboard is non functioning?
Answer: It is non-functioning