First a start to the github page: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Minimig-AGA_MiSTer
A small disclaimer - I don't really use Amiga so much for gaming. Though I love to play the occasional Worms DC, Lemmings, Turrican etc, I spend most of my time doing is other things, like using various music software, graphics and animation, as well as exploring the operating system itself, shell and rexx scripting, doing whacky stuff like bringing "modern world" resources to the Amiga, managing my kubernetes clusters and servers in the cloud from the Amiga shell command line (or Directory Opus listers, heh)
Having both MiST and MiSTer, there are two things I really miss on the MiSTer
* Direct access to the FAT32 partition from the Amiga, where the cores etc are located.
* Networking - the serial port - where did it go?
About access to the FAT32 partition, I can understand why direct access to the SD card is not desired, as it is "owned" by Linux. Having both Linux and AmigaOS access the FAT32 filesystem would surely not end well. But, an easier ways to transfer data to the Amiga side is desired, one that doesn't involve ADF files as transport medium.
One workaround is having a Linux kernel with Amiga FFS support, so it can mount images with Amiga filesystem under Linux, let the user sftp/scp/whatever files to it, unmount the file, and then user can attach the image from menu as a disk and access it from Amiga side. This method has its issues, the image should not be in use by AmigaOS when Linux is writing around on it, so at least it should not be mounted on Amiga side at that point, maybe not even "attached" by the core as a drive.
What I imagine as a better solution, is to somehow network the Amiga side and the Linux side, and then use well known and proven protocols from the Amiga to reach filesystems on the Linux side - ftp, nfs, smb (ew). And this brings me to the second point above... where did the serial port go?
On the MiST I use the serial port for networking with a Raspberry Pi zero, which then exports filesystem shares, acts as NAT router, web proxy, rsh/ssh hop-host and whatever else I can think of. It is not at all fast, quite slow actually (5k/sec), but it is rock solid, and that helps. The fun part is that with the MiSTer the "pi" is already there, it "just" needs some wiring up. I have looked at the sources for the firmware a little, and first got the impression that the Amiga serial port was forwarded to the native serial port output (merged with the Linux serial console output?), but nothing I have sent to the serial port from Amiga side ever showed up, so I guess not. I can imagine some would want the serial port available on GPIO pins, attach a MAX3232-RS232 DB9 adapter for playing games over null modem cable too
Thinking of other scenarios/challenges...
* implementing a well supported Zorro ethernet card on the FPGA, that can use existing drivers (most obvious choice being A2065)
* implementing a new Zorro ethernet card on FPGA, which then also require new SANA2 drivers
* route ethernet packages to a tap interface on the Linux side
* ... and for example add it to a bridge interface along with eth0, so that when you physically plug in the MiSTer, the Linux gets one IP-address on the LAN and the Amiga side gets another on the same LAN.
* ... alternatively, like I do, use the Linux side as NAT router for the Amiga side.
* route ethernet packages to something else - a dedicated ethernet port on GPIO pins for the Amiga? I personally would not want that, though
* hybrid emulation - not use FPGA at all for networking, as UAE can do all this already, and also has built in bsdsocket.library
But then I think we are perhaps more talking about enhancing UAE with the FPGA, than giving Minimig an emulated CPU + FastRAM.
Not that I have anything against that, UAE also allow sharing of hosts filesystem directories as "disks" on the Amiga side, so it would solve that issue too.
A fun brain twister scenario is where you have the ARM system with Amiga chipset on the FPGA, where a native ARM OS can access the Amiga chipset, very much like how PowerPC on PowerUP cards can access Amiga chipset - I'm sure the AROS guys could find some use in that, hehe
Allright, this become sort of long, a brain dump of ideas from my side - reactions and other ideas are welcome
I will look more into the serial port thing (hopefully xmas brings more time), as in any case I would love to have a serial login tty of the Linux side available on the serial port of the Amiga.
Cheers!
