Would you be excited for an Atari ST mini ?

[exxosuk]

Aside from the MiST, There was a "mini ST" being worked on a few years back using original chips  https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=51564#p51564  It was based on a early H5 design , so it had a lot of the fixes and updates etc. Once the 72pin simm was swapped out for smaller RAM and If you forget the cartridge port, then all the space the PSU took up is gone, just use a small power brick, internal or external. Overall the board wasn't much wider than the floppy drive. Maybe 2 floppy drives back to back in size overall.  The main problem is a smaller keyboard would be needed, or a external one, and a new case done. Aside from that, the problem is lack of time as always, and there just isn't enough interest in original board remakes to warrant spending all the time on such things. It's the same old problem of no source for the original chips anymore. So you're forced to FPGA, and well, the MiST already exists.

 

The Suska was a similar thing. IMHO went a bit to far in the direction of FPGA and didn't really have original IO which was a shame. That was a great project, but I don't think many were interested in that either. A lot of projects have come and gone over the years. They just never gain traction or support from enough users or developers. So again, the MiST is the only likely solution for anything past original machines. Even venturing into the ATX type world with the Milan, Hades etc, nothing really survived. I don't know how popular those were back in the day as they was really expensive IIRC.  

[Clint Thompson]

I guess it depends on the price but I would be more than willing to sink teeth into a Falcon and STbook remake.

[harmonyFM]

Since Apple will probably never make something like a Mac mini in the way we talk about it, the best I could ever hope for is to get a Jackintosh mini for myself. I’d personally find it a real hoot and go out of my way to get it if they included something like a faux (or real!) reproduction of the CRT monitor.

[phoenixdownita]

When it comes to gaming I go back to this video quite often:

 

 

but also

 

The first is interesting because at a certain point there’s a frame counter … the second because it does show some games better on the ST.

 
The early 3d games were faster on the ST but then again 10 frames per second were not always even achieved (sometimes half that number) so not sure they aged well without acceleration. Given the speed  modest advantage the experience was more pleasant on ST for those but not by much.

 

For a “mini” only thing that makes sense are games, productivity apps are barely functional compared to modern alternatives (Cubase included that still is a thing, for the GFABasic crowd that too is still a thing on Windows) so no real point to bother with licenses (which would require sw form of the dongles as well for some).

 

Edited April 22 by phoenixdownita