If you’ve been jealous of all the fancy modern C64 and Amiga remakes, the Atari community finally has something to celebrate besides lackluster licensed toys. Atari enthusiast Dennis Shaw has revealed the MiniST, a compact, FPGA-powered tribute to the 16-bit ST, and it’s the kind of lovingly overbuilt passion project that could only exist in a niche community like this.
The MiniST is built around a Tang Nano FPGA board running the MiSTeryNano core, itself a port of the better-known MiSTer project. That setup lets it deliver a “cycle exact” 8 MHz 68000 CPU with full chipset support, multiple TOS ROMs, and both color and mono video over HDMI. Audio isn’t an afterthought either: you get YM2149 and STE DMA sound piped through HDMI, plus a Blitter, ASCI hard disk support, and real MIDI in and out for all those dusty giant analog synths you swear you’re going to use “any day now.”
All of this is wrapped in a sleek black TKL-style wedge case that started life as an open design for Raspberry Pi, then got tweaked and shared back with the community. Shaw is very clear that the whole thing is built on open-source materials, and anyone with a 3D printer, patience, and a mild tolerance for sanding dust can try to roll their own.
If you want one already assembled, though, here’s the catch: the first run is just five units, priced at about 350 euros (roughly 400 dollars) each. Shaw says the bottleneck isn’t demand but time; printing, sanding, painting, and assembling each machine is a full-on craft project. Judging by the reaction in the Atari ST and STe users Facebook group, he could probably sell a lot more if he found a way to scale up.
Between the boutique approach and the open files, the MiniST feels less like a product line and more like an invitation: if Commodore can have multiple modern revivals, why not the ST? Now someone just needs to do a mass-market version before this thing becomes the next mythical “you had to be there” machine.
Source: Atari ST Fans Facebook via Tom’s Hardware
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