There’s no higher retro computing companion than the Amiga. From its wealthy historical past to the traditional old-school design, trendy computer systems simply don’t really feel the identical as that period of residence computing. Itching to get that previous feeling again into his life, Rob Fisher determined to construct an Amiga 1200 emulation challenge utilizing none aside from our favourite SBC—the Raspberry Pi. Not solely does this challenge appear like an Amiga, it sports activities a working floppy drive that the Pi is ready to work together with because of a intelligent interface card.
To construct the challenge, Fisher is housing a Raspberry Pi inside a contemporary Amiga 1200 duplicate shell. When you may simply use virtually any Pi for this challenge, he opted to make use of a Raspberry Pi 4 to energy the machine. To make full use of the case design, the ports on the Pi have been routed to the surface of the shell for entry, together with the floppy drive. This makes for a seamless expertise because the challenge consists of only one unit until you plug in some equipment.
Fisher shared a video to YouTube breaking down the challenge design from the in and out. On this video, he shares not solely the {hardware} inside however the place he obtained the parts so you possibly can simply recreate it at residence. In response to Fisher, it is a work in progress however we’re nonetheless impressed with the challenge to date.
As we talked about above, the principle {hardware} used on this challenge is a RaspberryPi 4 set inside an Amiga 1200 shell. Along with the Pi, he’s utilizing an A500 keyboard from eBay for enter. A Greaseweazle floppy adapter board is used to assist the Pi interface with a PC floppy drive. The entire ports, together with the floppy drive, are mounted with extensions to allow them to be simply accessed from the surface of the case. A 3D-printed button is used to launch the floppy drive.
In one other video, Fisher provides us a take a look at what the Amiga challenge appears to be like like in motion. It’s working Pimiga 3, an Amiga emulation utility that may be programmed to get the traditional feel and appear of the unique working system. If you wish to learn extra about emulating the Amiga, take a look at our information on easy methods to emulate the Amiga on a Raspberry Pi. Within the demo video, Fisher additionally demonstrates the floppy drive is totally purposeful by popping in a couple of Amiga journal cowl disks to see how they carry out.
If you wish to get a better take a look at this Raspberry Pi challenge, take a look at the unique video shared to YouTube by Rob Fisher and be sure you observe him for future tasks in addition to any updates on this one.