Selling an Golden Image RC-1000

Finally, I've decided to get some free room at my desktop. I'm selling one of the Amiga RAM expansions I have - the Golden Image RC-1000. Good shape, little yellowed, fully working. ~ 50 Euros OVNO.

Here you can see also how my Amiga 500 looks like now.
Bare motherboard, lies proudly on the desk. Nothing fancy,
waiting to go back to the box OR finishing the 1,5MB ChipRAM trick somehow
(probably NOT, because my Agnus is not fat enough).

Amiga new PSU and some other new stuff.

I've managed to get some more free time and finished converting the Dell PSU to use it with my Amiga. I've added a simple switch to connect PS_ON to GND and a green LED on PWR_OK to signal if the PSU is working. Amiga is working decently on that, although I have not testet it yet under full load. I guess it shouldn't be a problem. The PSU can supply up to 15A on +5V and 12A on +12V lines. More than enough for my setup (with everything on).

At the moment my Amiga looks like that: 

Not very good indeed. I plan to put it together and mount the metal shielding (at least underneath the motherboard) as soon as I finish all the planned mods. On the left you can  the Protar A500HD, connected to the Amiga via side expansion slot (aka Zorro I). Unfortunately I've failed to run any RAM on it. I've tested like 30 pieces of SIMM memory (EDO and FPM, different size and timing) and none of them showed anything in CLI after AVAIL-ing the available memory. It seems that one realy need the Protar RAM sticks, that differ somehow from normal sticks. So this part of my plans is still a big fail. 

On the other hand I've got a new external FDD, that is lying under the Amiga, as seen in the photo above.

As you can see the trapdor expansion port is empty. It is because I've just received an KCS Power PC Board bought on Amibay.com:

I plan to install it as soon as I finish the 1MB Chip + 0,5MB Fast mod. I will have to solder a small pcb for generating control signals for the additional RAM in the expansion slot, as the Amiga will natively adress the 1MB of RAM that is soldered on the motherboard. KCS Power PC should add additional 0,5MB of Fast RAM and a RAM disk (?) or something ;). We'll se how it works, when it will work. At the moment putting the card in does not make any difference in anything, as the JP7A jumper is cut.

So, there are some plans for the future, concerning this region of my interests:

• Finish the mod for using 1MB Chip on-board and 0,5MB Fast in the trapdoor (I'll be testing it firstly with other expansions).
• Mount the metal shielding of the Amiga.
• Try to run any RAM on the Protar.
• Test and run the KCS Power PC.

Night work on Amiga hardware.

As you might remember, recently I've fried my Amiga PSU. Although I would like to repair it someday, at this moment I've decided to use an ATX PSU from a PC. I bought a PSU from a Dell GX280, because it's nice and slim and soldered the cable from the original Amiga PSU into the Dell one. I have to add a switch and some nice LED to have it complete and test it with my Amiga.

I'm in a hurry a little, because I'm getting a little unpatient with my Protar A500HD - a SCSI controller with Fast RAM. Althought it was working correctly on a ghetto version of the PSU (cables from the Amiga PSU sticked into an AT power supply connector) but the RAM was not working. This might be an issue with power supply quality - the AT PSU I'm using is not in the best condition possible and gives voltages that are not exactly correct, or with the RAM itself. Now I got over 20 different SIMMs to test them and a fancy new PSU - I hope that both will work and I'll manage to get the 8MB FastRAM :-).

No pictures today, but I will post some as soon as I get the ATX-Amiga Power Supply complete and my Amiga running (with 8MB FastRAM, I hope).

Fried Amiga PSU

I have recently fried my Amiga powersupply, so until I don't manage to get a new one or repair this I will not be showing any Amiga goodnes. The good thing is that my Amiga is still alive (I've tested in on a AT PSU).

Okay, so from now the plans look like that:

• Repair the PSU for Amiga.
• Get some internet on the Linux Box to apt-get needed software (eg. setserial) and download the .adf's for Amiga.
• Install AmigaOS 2.x on the Amiga (as now I have Kickstart 2.05 and probably will not change it for 3.1 now).
• Run AmiTCP. Internet on A500 !!!oneone
• Finish the plans for PAK68/3. I'm planning to make this accelerator for my Amiga, and now I'm at the beginning putting all the schematics into Eagle.

In the mean time:

• Try to write some software for the AT90USB162 on the Intersil evaluation board. I've checked that it can be done. One can download the whole .hex file from the uC and program it with something else.
• Have some fun with a rack. And Eurocard. More info soon.
• I have some loudspeakers to repair. As this is part of a pending project the priority is high :).

Linux Box, some serial buisness.

Yesterday I managed to get sme spare time to get a new computer up and running. This one is planned to be a Linux Box with various uses (for now it has one). The computer itself looks rather harmfull and compact: 

Inside there is a industrial motherboard in PICMG 1.3 standard with an backplane for 6 PCI-X cards. On the card - double Xeon 2,8 GHz and 1GB of ECC DDRAM. Sounds like enough for most of the things that I could be capable of imagining to do on such machine. Also I crammed an SCSI controller that will be mostly used to interface to 50pin disks that I use for the Amiga (as far as I know Linux is capable of mounting FFS and/or OFS file systems). As for software I went with Ubuntu Linux - probably out of laziness (as I had it on some Live CD). I've downloaded the newest distribution of the Ubuntu Server and just installed it on this machine. As the ethernet connection is not running on this machine (dunno' why, have to check it) I haven't installed anything more.

So, let's try to interface with the Amiga. I have connected both computers with a Nullmodem (a standard one, not some of the fancy 'ADF-transfer kits', that people are selling (price of a nullmodem x 10) and in fact these ARE normal nullmodems). So I chose some example file on my DH0, and typed in on the screen to see its content. After that I started the Linux Box and made it to start listening to the serial port (ttyS0):

cat /dev/ttyS0

This wat you will see it on the display, but yoy can redirect it to a file by using the >> {your file}. Then, on Amiga, I have sent the file over a serial:

type {your file} to ser:







As you can see - it works. It works accidentally as I have not done anything to set the serial port parameters, both computers are working in the default settings. I have to install setserial on the Linux Box to be able to configure the serial port, and in order to do that I have to have an internet connection on it up and running, so I guess it's the closest thing that I will be doing.

Amiga Kickstart switcher installation

So let's get starting! First with a Kickswitch installation in my Amiga 500. 

I've recently bought an Kickstart switcher by random chance. Instead of buying a fully tested one I've decided to go for a untested one, that I've found on allegro. It was a set with a A500 rev 6a motherboard in a not-very-mint condition but still everything seemed to be in place, so there I was:

After checking the electrical connections of the switch I delicately pryed the old Kickstar ROM from my Amiga and inserted the connector into the socket. I have insulated everithing with some foamy stuff used for packing electronics (after checking that it is not conductive).

First boot - Kickstart 1.3:

Reboot and switch the kick - Kickstart 2.05 (I somehow expected that one):

 

So... I got a Kickstart switcher up and running for half the price of a regular (fully tested and/or new). Next step - reflash the Kick from 2.05 to 3.1. I hope to get my hands on some eeprom programmer at work.