Yeah, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been possible to fit the whole A500 Mini inside the mouse.
Have a USB-C cable to provide the video signal to the outside and deliver power to the device, and that’s it. Not sure though if you could route the gamepad and a keyboard over that same USB line, though. But my guess would be it works, judging by the newer docking stations we have in the office.
I’m happy with how it is. Smaller isn’t always better 
My guess would be the original has a board that takes up most of the mouse and the new one has a board that barely even fits the buttons. 
There are several Videos of people that opened it up, but until now I only saw them opening the A500 Mini itself, not the mouse.
I think I now found a way to get Workbench runnig, it should be able to start WB 1.3 & WB 3.1 too. I´ll test that later.
To the downsides:
There are some games that don´t work at all or are to fast. For most problems that sometimes occur you can change settings and you are good to go.
The WHD LOAD Package that comes with it has to contain the Filename of the game you want to start. This works for mostly anything on the most known site for whd Load Games.
a few don´t work. I´ve read about people that had newer versions of the games, that are not in the A500 File and they just edited it to be able to run the game.
I just used another version of the game if I found a non working game.
Or you can use this file directly from the WHDLoad Website, it has way more filenames in it. But it lags of preconfigured settings for gamepad and mouse. The file that comes with the A500 Mini has these settings for a lot of games already. So just start and play.
That doesn´t bother me. There are thousends of games, if a few don´t work, I don´t really care.
But it´s said the Retrogames regularly will update this file. So you can copy a newer one on the A500 Mini from time to time.
Also there seem to be some compatiblity issues with USB Sticks. There are people that had problems getting theirs recognized at all. Mine all work just fine, even the mini USB Micro SD Card stick I´m currenly using works flawless.
And as of now, the is no support for ADF Floppy files oder HDF harddisk files. That´s sort of a bummer.
No ADF support means that currently a huge chunk of games can´t be played, since there just are no WHDLoad installations done for it.
It´s possible that Retrogames will add that support in an upcoming firmware update. Or not, who knows. Maybe some “hacks” will come up to add it. maybe not.
To be clear. The A500 Mini is not meant for hardcore Amiga Users, that maybe even still own and use original hardware.
It´s an emulation machine focusing on the ease of use. And in this it´s awesome.
I don´t have any problems with the donwsides. Yeah if it gets ADF or even HDF support, that would be awesome. If not, it´s still great.
I think there are too many different Amigas and configurations to be able that it could play literally everything out there while keeping it easy to use.
So, can it replace original hardware? No
Is it the best and most capable emulation solution out there? No.
Is it the best and most fun way to play play thousands of childhood games? Definitive Yes! (At least for me)
And you can tinker around with it. That´s really not hard. If you want. But you don´t need.
So after 5 days of playing, tinkering, learning and having a lot of fun - I can still say, I love it and I don´t regret I bought it. None of all the other solutions feel as great as this little thing.
And man, the games look awesome, so sharp and cristal clear. On 24" Monitor as well as on 42" & 65 " Screens. On Pimiga they all look kind of not 100% sharp.
I still want to have Workbench on it. Not to be able to work with it. Just because.
And I want to start “say” and type in stuff ^^
Oh, there is a very small german youtube channel who used an “Amiga keyboard to USB adapter” and took the A500 Minis internals to place it into a A500 Case. Some 3D printed placeholders and covers and you have > The DIY A500 Maxi. ^^
Here is the last part:
Doesn’t really sound so easy to use if you want to play something that didn’t come pre-installed?
I never owned an amiga but tinkered quite a bit with other emulator like dosbox and even the occasional winUAE* to get old games working. Never took more than a couple of minutes to get something running, so this whole WHD thing sounds daunting.
* because I own some ADF files for monkey island and wanted to compare to running them from scummVM (well, after extracting them, obviously)
Honestly if all you ever saw from the amiga were static screenshots in magazines, the temptation to catch up on what I missed back then isn’t very big. (Still jealous for all those Lucasfilm game releases I missed though).
Most likely others feel exactly the same when I rave about the C64 maxi (except its utterly crappy joystick)
Adding WHDLoad Games is really easy.
You copy some files they provide on a USB stick and you add your WHDLoad games to it.
That’s it.
Yes!
Got it working. Was a little bit more to do but not that hard.
To be clear, adding games, using and playing it is super easy and fast.
Something like workbench getting up and running is not that easy since there are no WHDLoad Workbench files you can download.
EDIT:
Ok over the day other people came way further
They now got Workbench 3.1 and even Workbench 3.9 working. And from within there, you can start ADF Games also.
And the first Update of the WHDLoad date is there, it fixes most of the games that wouldn´t load.
It´s just the files that you had to put on the USB Stick. Put them there again, done.
Do you need to put them in their own folder each or can you simply dump them on the same USB disk?
What shell is that in workbench?
(Yes, I am too lazy to google the answers and it is just more enjoyable to learn about it from someone who’s really enthused)
The WHDLoad Files you have to download from retrogames are in a folder that you have to put on your USB.
You can put your Games just on the root of your USB or you make folders for them if you want to have them somehow sorted. The Games need to be packed as *.lha file. As they come from the website were you download them. So it´s one file per game.
That´s workbench 1.3 and it´s shell in my sceenshot. I´ll give 3.1 or maybe 3.9 a try too, but not today anymore. now I´m going to play some games 
Certainly not bash .
The Amiga DOS 1.3 manual basically explains that SHELL is a more advanced version of the old command line interface (CLI) that allows such fancy things as editing lines or accessing a command history. It’s really it’s own thing.
But I think the Extras disk had EMACS on it.
Talking of Emacs:
Now on Kickstarter for version 3.
So Worbench/Amiga OS 3.9 works fine now too. Turned out it was as easy as with 1.3 but my Hardfile for it was just faulty. Made a new one and now it works.
Using the method to start them, by editing a game so it wont start properly but instead Amiberry setup comes up (like WinUAE setup) you can either load a Workbench HDF file or even just put in a floppy. Means using this edited gamefile you can start adf Games afterwards too by inserting them to the floppy like you would in WInUAE.
And it looks like I have to drive to a lokal 3D Print service tomorrow.
https://www.printables.com/de/model/170947-amiga-500-mini-a500-mini-mini-floppy-disk/files
So little update on the workbench front. I got in contact to one of the Amiga Gurus in the A500 Mini Facebook group because I had some questions about settings in Amiberry.
Turns out he’s pushing the Mini really hard and is currentliy setting up a very easy solution for a fully functional workbench environment. Fully packed wiith goodness. Software(DPaint, Protracker…), Emulators (C64, NES…), WHD and CD Games, ADF Support, ported games (Duke Nukes 3d Fullspeed for example). I’m currently beta testing with a few others and it’s fantastic. As easy to setup as adding a WHD Game.
That’s awesome. That little thing has power enough for that. Not like a PC but much more as I expected.
No Modding or something else needed. It stays the easy and in my opinion best Amiga gaming machine but get’s just much more features.
Il post and show pictures as soon is it’s official.
I have to ask: was he meditating?
Sorry that´s just a common german phrase if somebody is really good at what he´s doing.
So today the Workbench build will be released in some sort of a Discord release party. It’s kind of funny. Turns out, Perifractic from Retro Recipies on youtube is in the Facebook A500 Mini Group too. He posted he will make a live Video today about The A500 Mini which he builds into a real A1200 Case and using it’s keyboard. In that post he wrote that by coincidenze it will be an hour before the release party for the Workbench build. Which was announced in that group too. And now he will make the link to it into his own video description.
I’ve tested the hell out of this build, it’s a very powerfull and fully packed Workbench. Best used by using a dedicated USB Stick for it. So you can have your original A500Mini and a UBS Stick in it for extra WHDLoad Games. And if you wish to dive into Workbench with all it’s software (like protracker Dpaint,Amos Pro,BlitzBasic…) , HD installed games, Audio mods, possibility to load ADF games and so on, you ust swap the USB Stick and you are good to go.
No modification of the A500Mini at all.
Was this a thing way back on the original amiga? Or just something you can run on the mini, like running retroarch on the SNES mini?
That’s really nice, actually. Makes me wonder what the limits for “soft modding” the C64 mini/maxi are
Not back then, but there are indeed emulators for the Amiga. AFAIR there was a Frodo port (emulating the C64).
