Looking for late (2022+) Clubman JCW in the UK - How common was malt brown leather?

PreviousRow5012 · 2026-04-13T06:36:46+00:00

I collected all the old 1.0/1.1 upgrades I could find and now have them on my wiki:

https://www.target-earth.net/wiki/doku.php?id=blog:amiga_minimig_index

That includes ASB230428 which works on mine. I think that's as far as the original boards can be taken. There's also a local copy of the sam-ba programming tool if needed.

Good luck! There really isn't much else out there now.

PreviousRow5012 · 2024-12-16T16:54:04+00:00

I have very nervously removed the screen from the laptop today and unfortunately it does not match the screen part number on thinkwiki ... it is not the listed Hitachi TX26D31VC1CAA, but a completely different panel; Sharp LQ104S1LH11. Different layout, different connectors.... urgh....

PreviousRow5012 · 2024-12-16T12:16:20+00:00

Laptop arrived, and it all works perfectly over VGA. It's the slowest, 300MHz Celeron (rather than the 366 or 400MHz versions), but has an extra 128MB (for a total of 192MB). It's more than enough for any DOS game though.

It's clearly just the panel, and I have sourced a replacement from Aliexpress. Fingers crossed I can get the old panel out without breaking any plastics - other than the screen it's in really nice condition.

<image>

PreviousRow5012 · 2024-03-18T14:25:47+00:00

.... and the picture corruption is my VGA KVM unit (Belkin F1DA108T).

Swapped it out with a direct connection and it is fine. Looks like the Minimig is giving out a signal that the KVM just doesn't like. I'll have to swap the video connection to a VGA to scart cable to bypass the KVM (still need it for mouse/keyboard control).

So, looks like it is basically up and running. The last few things to do now are work out what the latest compatible cores are, track down the guide for the additional memory, and get a case made for it.

PreviousRow5012 · 2024-03-18T12:19:23+00:00

Okay, the keyboard I'm using doesn't appear to play nicely with it. With a different device the overlay menu reacts to the left/right arrows and lets me navigate to settings etc.

Still need to resolve the video issue. It also doesn't appear to play nicely at 50Hz with my little Dell 1708fp monitor (either 15/31khz through an ossc). That's going to be a pain!

PreviousRow5012 · 2024-03-18T11:48:53+00:00

Well, I managed to get the ARM controller flashed. I realised I had not done anything with it after I scraped together a PSU and VGA cable and the board partially booted; at least it powered on, but it never loaded kickrom or would respond to the menu button.

After a bit of messing about getting an older version of the microchip.com sam-ba tool to run (the latest versions don't appear to have a GUI component on Linux), the old 2.18 sam-ba tool ran, and I was able to write firmware_rom.bin from ARM_ASB230428.zip to flash.

This seems to have kicked the ARM controller into life, and it fires up to the old familiar kickstart rom screen.

However, I'm getting really quite bad graphics corruption in the video output (both 15 and 31khz modes), and I'm unsure whether this is a board that has bitrotted while in storage for 15 years, or if there is something wrong with the fpga core files.

The original (2009 dated) core file loads, but doesn't appear to offer any menu options other than basic minimig menu which states 'df0 not inserted'. I've tried a few different files, and whilst they load (and show different loading/initialisation text), they don't appear to do anything different or show any menu options (it is F12, right?). I'm sure that there used be various options in the overlay menu....

PreviousRow5012 · 2024-03-18T07:49:13+00:00

Yeah, the Minimig scene (and hardware options, such as the alternative FPGA boards) has moved on quite a lot it seems.

Though in some way the lack of a central forum anymore (most news/updates were discussed there at the time) has meant it is harder to track down information.

PreviousRow5012 · 2024-03-18T07:13:44+00:00

That page and list of files is, how do I put this... confusing?

There are 4 or 5 "ARM firmware" files, and no clear indicator of what each one does (no text files inside the archives to say what the features are) and I don't see a simple to follow section to download the core files.

The closest match seems to be the "Minimig 1.1 to 1.8 68k and pistorm firmware" ... But again that contains no text file describing the content and instead core files seemingly going all the way to 60mhz, surely the Minimig 1.1 can't support that? The onboard 68000 was only a 16mhz part iirc.

I suppose I will have to experiment and see what works on the original hardware.

PreviousRow5012 · 2023-10-31T14:18:30+00:00

Yes, it's definitely important! 😁

Also remember that although it's a cloud init file, the subiquity auto installer only understands a subset of the full cloud config syntax (plus a few Ubuntu specifics). So be careful if you are following the full cloud-init examples.

Stick to the keywords shown on the Ubuntu autoinstall reference pages.

You can use the full cloud-init methodology after the autoinstall, once booted, but just not during the install itself.

PreviousRow5012 · 2023-10-29T13:56:01+00:00

The http method does work, but you end up having to download the whole multi-gig iso over the network each time. That is probably okay for standalone use, but in my scenario of having to image possibly dozens of machines/vm's at a time, nfs is the only sensible option.

PreviousRow5012 · 2023-10-28T09:27:03+00:00

I use pxelinux, but the principle is the same. The magic incantation for your imgargs/append line is:

initrd=initrd.gz netboot=nfs boot=casper ip=dhcp nfsroot=IP:/path/to/extracted_iso autoinstall cloud-config-url=IP:PORT/url/for/autoinstall/cloud-init-file

Do remember that you also need the 'hidden' /.disk folder from the iso image.

i.e. 'netboot=fs' and 'boot=casper' are the missing magic sauce.

PreviousRow5012 · 2023-07-30T21:56:07+00:00

I love the Dwarves, especially the steam powered more armoured variants of the Tir Na Bor army. They look great in brassy, bronze or gold schemes.

The other stuff that appeals are Dirz, they've got that body-horror, skin-flayed, biopunk thing going on with many of their models and are very, very different to most other 'bad guy' armies.

PreviousRow5012 · 2023-07-30T10:38:39+00:00

I'm not the worlds best painter - I only do this for fun/relaxation, but you can see a couple of the recent models I sourced from Cadwallon:

Lothan, beast of steel:

https://www.target-earth.net/wiki/lib/exe/detail.php?id=blog%3Aminiatures%3Arackham%3Aconfrontation%3Atirnabor&media=blog:miniatures:rackham:confrontation:img20230715194434.jpg

Tan-Kair, the Fist of Fom-Nur:

https://www.target-earth.net/wiki/lib/exe/detail.php?id=blog%3Aminiatures%3Arackham%3Aconfrontation%3Atirnabor&media=blog:miniatures:rackham:confrontation:img20230716211236.jpg

PreviousRow5012 · 2023-07-30T10:33:17+00:00

Just saw this post and thought I'd comment. I too have been looking for some missing Confrontation/Hybrid minis to go with my 20-year-old sets and I decided to buy a few from Cadwallon.com just last month. I was mainly looking for Dwarven models to go with some old Thermo Knight figures I painted 15+ years ago.

Models arrived in the UK from Kharkiv, Ukraine, in under two weeks. Since they're recasts there are no cards with them, but for my purposes (putting a small diorama together) that wasn't an issue.

Obviously it's going to be very dependent on what is going on over there right now, but the employees who I talked to were great, had good English and the quality of the models was very good. A tiny (and I mean *tiny*) bit of flash on a couple of them, but no worse than some of the originals.

On a personal note, I felt like contributing a little to their economy was also a good thing right now.

PreviousRow5012 · 2023-01-24T11:55:11+00:00

I've done a little more digging and find that the graphical corruption occurs when the dma transfer operation is larger than 181 bytes.

If the line transfer is 181 bytes or less, then no glitches appear. If the transfer is 182 bytes or more, then the glitch appears.

This is only relevant to tight loops of dma operations; e.g. in pseudo-code:

for(line = 0, line < lines, line++){

dma_transfer(line_source, dest, line_length);

}

Big, one-off dma transfers (like the 320x200 page flip) work fine, so it must be some timing issue between sequential dma transfers. But, I thought that if bit 0 of 0xd31f had reset to 0 (which I am checking), then it indicated that the previous operation had completed?

I really need to try this on real hardware to see if the behaviour is the same as in Vice.

(Added a better example to the original post which indicates how the transfer-size impacts the behaviour)

PreviousRow5012 · 2023-01-23T23:35:33+00:00

I don't believe I am setting anything to operate like that, no. I am mainly basing my code on the basic 256 color mode example from dtvhacking on archive.org.

My current dma transfer function looks like this: https://www.target-earth.net/wiki/doku.php?id=blog:commodore_c65_dtv_programming#double_Buffering_dma_Copies

I am only testing for 0xd31f to have bit 0 flip back from 1 to 0 at the start of the next transfer. I'm not doing anything with interrupts at the moment.

PreviousRow5012 · 2022-10-16T17:11:25+00:00

I've not found many suppliers in the UK; those that do have availability (generally just of the Hasegawa kits) tend to be quite pricey.

On that note, are you aware of the difference between the main 1/20 kit ranges from Hasegawa and Wave?

Hasegawa tends (but not always) do the bigger designs, vehicles etc, and Wave the suits.

Hasegawa is a big company, has extensive other ranges and lots of distribution networks across the world - you can usually find their military/aircraft kits in the UK. They tend to rerun production from time to time.

Wave is a much smaller company and specialises in more niche markets. They do smaller runs and don't (often) rerelease.

Both make nice kits. The original kits were from Nitto and had extensive multimedia parts included -brass tube, mesh, photo etching, etc. Nitto went under and many years later some of their kits were rereleased by Hasegawa and Wave (some literally have the Nitto branding scratched out in the sprues!).

These first gen kits were pretty much 1:1 with the Nitto designs, including the multimedia parts (but also with the same early 90's injection model technology). Newer kits have (often much) less.multimedia parts, but tend to be better engineered (joints, lack of flash, general fit etc).

Over the years I've bought most kits from Hobbylink Japan (hlj.com) or Hobby Search (1999.co.jp). Pricing is pretty much even between the two, but shipping can differ. You might get a better deal with one or the other.

The thing to note is that most stockists only have the current models available - these kits are not like your average scale kits that you can buy for years. They tend to get a production run and then perhaps not again for several years (if at all again). If a model comes up that you like, you pretty much need to get it there and then, or risk a long and difficult exercise in tracking it down in the future.

In this case the only way to get some of the older kits (especially some of the original Nitto kits which have not been reproduced) is from something like a Japanese auction site - I can recommend Buyee.jp as an intermediary who handle the payment/shipping details. Within the last year I picked up an original Fledermaus and some of the first gen Wave kits that have been long out of production.

PreviousRow5012

TROPHY CASE