MiSTress - Conversion Kit for Amiga cases

[akeley]

Got this email today from 8bits4ever

MiSTress for the MiSTer

Hello all!

We couldn't ignore anymore the popularity and success the MiSTer FPGA project is having and the high quality of its cores. We decided to jump on the wagon with something we think is cool, specially for Amiga lovers.

The MiSTress is a complete conversion kit to fit your MiSTer inside an Amiga 500 case. Off course, it uses the Amiga keyboard as a regular input device and it integrates a USB hub for connecting all the usual USB mouse, gamepads, etc.

The MiSTress board features all the same connections as the official MiSTer IO 6.1 board plus includes a low latency DB9 joystick port (Amiga/CD32/Atari compatible) and a selectable i2s audio DAC. The kit comes with all the screws and 3D printed parts needed for installation, a 40 mm. cooling fan and also extensions for HDMI and ethernet ports.

For complete specs and details please visit the product page linked below and don't hesitate to contact us with any inquiries about.

Cheers!
The 8bits4ever Team

https://www.8bits4ever.net/product-page/mistress

[MikkyTee]

Looks promising, ideally i would rather have an a600 option, as the a500 is a huge lump of a case to be sitting on a desk. The a600 is such a nice size for a mister unit, but nevertheless it looks a nice design

[bazza_12]

I'd love a1200 version of this..

[ByteMavericks]

That’s really neat, and a much tidier solution than mine, which is a few wedges and an Arduino handling the keyboard, plus a couple of transistors to drive the LEDs

[zorrobandito]

The portability of an A600 is part of the appeal. The A500 is a bulky machine - I have two - it's not exactly backpack-friendly.

Still, love what they're doing and I have to say that Minimig captures the feel of an Amiga perfectly, so replacing ailing Amigas with insta-load, super-reliable MISTers seems like a great idea.

[Caldor]

The portability of an A600 is part of the appeal. The A500 is a bulky machine - I have two - it's not exactly backpack-friendly.

Still, love what they're doing and I have to say that Minimig captures the feel of an Amiga perfectly, so replacing ailing Amigas with insta-load, super-reliable MISTers seems like a great idea.

Yeah, this is also the reason why I am avoiding the A500. Its about as big as the C128. They are just too big.

[arglmauf]

Question: Does the board block the space for a floppy drive? Because I want to keep the option for a proper drive if that option ever becomes a reality

[akeley]

Judging just from the photo, the board seems to go up to the end of Help key, and the floppy goes to the beginning of Del, so it'd have to go over the board and there are some cables and elevated MiSTer already...rather doubtful it'd fit. You can always email and ask them though (or use external drive, if the ability of connecting them ever materializes).

[arglmauf]

Well, right now I already got my own setup of a MiSTer A500 skinwalker which already has space for the floppy drive alotted. So I would only be interested as support of the project itself. I'll try to contact them and ask about the space for the physical disk drive.

[NightShadowPT]

If you produce one for the Amiga 1200 case, you have a customer.

Cheers,

[akeley]

For A1200 they have MiSS - it's an FPGA which runs MiST firmware. Not a bad option (or at least was before the price went up to 200E), though it's VGA only.

[Beeble]

The A500 has a Numpad, which was required for older games and also benefits for ao486 use.

[german_user]

Looks promising, ideally i would rather have an a600 option, as the a500 is a huge lump of a case to be sitting on a desk. The a600 is such a nice size for a mister unit, but nevertheless it looks a nice design

I suspect that this is also due to the fact that with the A600 / A1200 you cannot continue to use the original keyboard so easily and cheaply.

[Hackshed_Carl]

Well, I think this is brilliant!
Whether it's suitable for everyones use cases or not, it's great to have yet another option.
I do like the consoled versions but for me, growing up with computers such as ZX spectrum and C64, I love the idea of having the keyboard as part of the machine itself.

Kudos for the team for designing it, and at an affordable price point (IMHO).

[shertz]

The A500 is the most common and arguably the cheapest amiga produced. Make sense this would be available for the A500. Sure its big and bulky but it does have the numeric keypad that you would need for some ao486 games.

I for one will be purchasing this

[Daniel8b]

Hey there!

I thought I just share a couple of pictures of the new MiSTress 1200 here:

51869483751_da5d69ceef_w.jpg

51870138550_99ce20d1b4_w.jpg

51869483736_0a04c5eea0_w.jpg

Cheers!

[petarku]

thanks Daniel , any plans for amiga 600 , it is on wish list for many here because of the factor.

[Daniel8b]

An Amiga 600 version is definitely possible, but I dont think there are so many A600 units out there that people wants to cannibalise. If someone starts making A600 repro cases we will make a board for sure...

[akeley]

Somebody said that they emailed you about availability and they got a reply there might be none available in 2022. Is that true?

[Daniel8b]

Somebody said that they emailed you about availability and they got a reply there might be none available in 2022. Is that true?

What product are you referring to?

We have a few products affected by the global semiconductor shortage, but not the MiSTress.

[akeley]

Ah, yes, that was in regard to MiSS 1200.

[ByteMavericks]

Mine's arrived, wonderful bit of kit and it is making my arduino based kb interface feel very inferior...

Would you be up for adding to the keymap at all?

[Daniel8b]

Would you be up for adding to the keymap at all?

Hi, it is possible to remap some keys. In fact we've released a binary for non-US keyboards (to remap the two international keys). Of course, you will need to reprogram the micro controller chip, either from the Arduino IDE using a male-to-male USB cable or with AVRDude using an USBasp programmer.

In case you have some experience with Arduino and want to try customising the layout yourself, we will be uploading the source code to our Gdrive in the coming days.

Greets!

[ByteMavericks]

Marvellous! Yes, I created a version of the common audio code to interface, but optimised for mister, here: https://github.com/ByteMavericks/MiMimiKB

[Daniel8b]

Marvellous! Yes, I created a version of the common audio code to interface, but optimised for mister, here: https://github.com/ByteMavericks/MiMimiKB

OMG! We've been using your code all along:
https://github.com/8bits4ever/MiMimiKB

Thank you so much for sharing it!

[ByteMavericks]

Ha! Brilliant! To be fair the vast majority was the work of others - credits are listed in the GitHub . I just tried to create a sane mapping

[petarku]

my Mistress is up and running and to thank Daniel for patience and sorting out keyboard problem i had. it is great product!
Now I have other problem which is noise (vertical lines) on my monitor picture that is coming from vga port(RGB) on mistress board compared with no noise from vga output on IO board on other mister I have and it drives me crazy. Both misters have same config files and I am testing them on Benq 702a monitor. I was chatting with Daniel and he thinks that noise might come because of the size of the board and he suggested maybe getting better PSU.
anyone else that has mistress here has same issue ? Any recommendation what to do ?
Thanks in advance,
Petar

[Beeble]

My Mistress arrived ~2 Weeks ago and I really like my new machine.

For some reason I can´t get analog Video to work. Screen stays completely white. VGA->Scart Cable works fine on the other MiSTer. Did I miss something?

Leading to my next question, if I understood the 2 Audio Chinch Sockets are disabled, that´s is correct? If I enable them, would I lose Audio on HDMI?
Can I use both? Ordered a HDMI Audio Extractor in case to install that in my Mister and add a 3,5mm Audio Jack in the back if all fails.

Is the Keyboard USB Powered when not in use? (As Power Supply for the audio extractor)

Thanks for reading until here

[Daniel8b]

For some reason I can´t get analog Video to work. Screen stays completely white. VGA->Scart Cable works fine on the other MiSTer. Did I miss something?

Assuming you are outputting RGB 15khz, is likely your screen is expecting blanking. You probably need to close the VGA_PWR jumper.

Leading to my next question, if I understood the 2 Audio Chinch Sockets are disabled, that´s is correct? If I enable them, would I lose Audio on HDMI?
Can I use both?

You should be able to use both. You need to move the two jumpers near the chinch sockets to the opposite position (and switch nr. 4 on the DE-10 nano should be at the lower position).

[NightShadowPT]

My MiSTress 1200 has arrived and I am enjoying it immensely. Having the MiSTer inside a new A1200 case (black) and using the Amiga keyboard makes it much more natural to use and it feels much closer to the "real deal".

I do have 2 things I would like it to have come with though:

- a 3D printed backplate to mask all the back connectors - Having the wholes there makes it look slightly amateurish.
- Having an adapter for a larger fan. The fan it ships with is significantly noisier than the one I had in my MiSTer before and I cannot use it because the adapter only fits the smaller fan.

Both of these can be remediated with some 3D printing files made available after sales, so fingers crossed it will happen one day.

Other than that, I highly recommend this solution as it is very elegant and one of the nicest cases for the MiSTer.