This was originally posted in the Useless Void as a reply to another member who posted pictures of his stuff in that thread which is rather pointless since it's a garbage can thread.
Here are some pictures of my stuff (besides the cardboard box where I've stored the important 3.5" diskettes (no games, just my source codes, graphics work, ~400 music modules/songs, instrument disks, programming tools etc.) that I kept when I dropped Amiga in late 1994/early 1995 and bought a PC). Back then they said the average lifespan of a Double Sided Single Density 3.5" diskette was ~10 years after which magnetic degradation destroyed any data on it. In the collection were diskettes from 1987 to 1994.
Starting with an image of my A500 rev.3 motherboard (first Amiga 500 to come out, rev.5 came just months later). It's the very Amiga 500 I carried home on my shoulder from the postal office in September 1987. The A500 wasn't officially released until October 1987, I had pre-ordered mine so I got mine before release day. I had convinced my mum it was worth it to open the bank account that was supposed to be locked until my 18th birthday, 4 years later . I used it between September 1987 and spring of 1993 when I bought an A1200. My brother in law took over the A500:
When I got it back it was in bad shape, missing keys, plenty of scratches and unstable, so I decided to do a restoration of it this summer.
The problem is that the first batch of Amiga 500's (the rev.3's, nicknamed "chickenlips" for the C= symbol that was cast in the cover only used on that revision of Amigas, seen in the above picture under the */prtscr button) used NMB/Hi-tek keyboards with cherry-like switches aka "space invaders keyboard" (due to the switches under the caps having the shape of a space invader alien) and I searched a long time for replacement keys (complete with springs, switches and caps) without result. I bought another cheap Amiga 500 but it was rev. 6 and had a Mitsumi-keyboard and they are totally different under the caps (they have a swampy rubber-dome and completely different switches) so it was futile. I did take the floppy drive from it since the one in my original rev.3 Amiga 500 was very bad.
FINALLY, on Amibay (basically ebay for Amiga stuff) I found a polish guy that had a German rev.3 NBM/Hi-tek keyboard with a single key missing which I had on my keyboard. It was in such good condition (basically pristine after a simple clean-up) that I ended up using that one (after I bought it...) and moved the differing keys from my old keyboard to the replacement:
If I hadn't found that one I'd have been forced to replace the entire keyboard with the readily available mitsumi keyboards (crap, swampy feeling etc. compared to the cherry/mechanic feel to the NMB/Hi-tek keyboards on the first batch of Amiga 500's).
The donor A500 (from which I picked the Floppy drive) has been raped and all socketed chips are now safely stored as replacement parts or for selling since A500 parts will keep shrink and become more difficult to find:
When I was in the attic I found some old A500 stuff, specifically a kickstart-switch with kickstart (firmware) 1.2 and 2.04 chips in the sockets. I had the exact same kickstart-switch in my A500 so I sold the one in my A500 on Amibay only to find out that the spare one I found in the attic didn't work (a trace line carrying voltage on the circuit board had been burned after a short or something). duh.. So I had to repair it.
Not a pretty fix but that was the thinnest cable I had, and most importantly the repair worked and I have a fully working KS1.2 and KS2.04 Kickstart Selector Switch (a 2-pair wire with a switch at the end mounted on the top left of the cover).
However, my main workhorse is an Amiga 1200 that I bought ~1.5 years ago. It came completely stock except the internal 2.5" IDE HD was 2GB instead of 20MB. That means 2MB RAM (compared to the 512Kb on the A500 and 1MB on the A500+). I had no way of transferring files between the 1200 and the PC and 2MB RAM is simply not enough to make the A1200 particularly usable except for playing games (that didn't require more RAM) so I kept it in a box for 8-9 months.
(yes, there's an Amiga 3000 to the right of the Amiga 1200, more about that later...)
On a Swedish Amiga forum that I had become a member of when I bought the A1200 (I became friend with a workmates future hubby (they're married and have a kid now) I asked if anybody had a RAM-expansion or better yet an accelerator card with RAM to sell.
A guy sold me an M-tec 1230 (Motorola 68030-cpu + 4MB fast ram) that had an empty socket for a 68881 or 68882 FPU. It was clocked at 42MHz which was a massive boost (not only is the 68030 a much better CPU than the 14MHz 68EC020, it basically, at that speed, made the computer 5 times faster when it comes to CPU (and the Fast Ram is MUCH faster than the 2MB Chip Ram that sits on the motherboard).
I decided to get an FPU (Freescale 68882 40Mhz) and ordered one through http://www.utsource.net/ (basically an outlet for asian/chinese dealers in otherwise hard-to-get chips that haven't been manufactured in a decade by buying huge bulk of old original stock (they do sell new modern stuff as well). It's very cheap since shipping is most often free (subsidised by the Chinese government). At the same time scrupulous people @ Amibay order bulk and sell the stuff for 10-30 times the price to clueless Amiga users.
Freescale 68882 FPU 40MHz rated:
I put that in and as soon as I powered on the A1200 I got a yellow screen. NOT good. I thought I had blown the entire computer or something. I first removed the M-tec 1230 and tried to boot. Worked fine. Then back with the card: yellow screen. I then removed the FPU: worked just fine then.
I'm not an electronics expert, I can solder cables and some simpler things (like that kickswitch) but have never messed with surface mounted stuff or trace-lines or replaced caps. But I was determined to see if I could solved the issue and started looking (using a magnifier glass) at the areas around the FPU socket and trace lines between the CPU and FPU-sockets:
I found two via's that had (gan)green crap on them meaning there's been an electro-chemical reaction at some point. I scraped off the green goo, sprayed the area with IPS and wiped the area clean and used my multimeter to trace the via-trace to it's other end. No connection. I scraped off a tiny bit of the lacquer on the trace-line right next to the via and measured. No connection. Tadaaa.. I didn't have the right stuff so I simply put fresh solder (with fluss) on the via and then "pulled" some of that solder to the bared trace line and let it heat up for a short time to make it stick to the bare metal. Did the same with the other acid damaged via. I also replaced the cap with a 100 microfarad one (the original was 43 microfarad) since one of the legs of the original cap was matte and had a slight green sheen to it.
When finished I pushed the FPU in, inserted the accelerator board into the A1200 and crossed all my fingers when I switched the power on. Voila, boot with working FPU.
While I was at it I removed the old dead 3v lithium coin battery (computer forgot clock/date settings every power off) after seeing this:
Replaced that cap, then I put a coin-holder on the BACK of the card instead (didn't fit on the top and would basically be in the way for closing the "trap door":
Plenty of space on the back and a coin holder instead of soldering a battery straight onto a card making it difficult to change when it's dead.
Then I sold the accelerator. Why? 4MB of Fast mem didn't last long at all, esp. not when I tried later Workbenches (the OS. The default for A1200 is Kickstart and Workbench 3.0, then an update to 3.1 was released) like 3.5 and esp. 3.9 which basically filled most of the RAM just booting up since it had a LOT of new stuff (everything from new sound libraries to new desktop themes/handlers/layouts/tools etc.). I also run custom Kickstart (3.9.x) that have the latest libraries, device-drivers etc. as well as bug fixes, performance improvements and many other things.
What did I get instead? A Blizzard 1230 MK-IV, complete with MMU and FPU AND support for up to 128MB 60ns EDO RAM. There's a 32MB 60ns SIMM-stick on it as of now. I took an old Northbridge heatsink from an old broken PC-board and tested it (the card runs everything @ 50MHz with it's on-board crystal) which worked fine. I've since replaced the crystal with a 55.5MHz crystal that I got for €4. Benchmarks shows a nice improvement. I've been thinking about building a multi-crystal switch-card with 50,55.5 and 60MHz crystals but then I figured "why would I switch to 50 if it's stable at 55.5 and/or 60?".
I've since replaced the silly rubber-band solution with a better solution (and using AS5) and it's a KICK-ASS card. It's basically the best 030-card for the A1200. The pin-edge is for a SCSI-controller expansion (which has a second RAM-slot for a combined maximum of 256MB RAM).
I've thrown out the shitty mega-slow 2.5" mechanical IDE-HD, bought an IDE-Compact Flash adapter and use a 4GB Compact Flash card as internal HD. The A1200 has a PCMCIA-interface and I've got a PCMCIA Compact Flash-adapter that allows me to use a FAT32-formatted Compact Flash card (I've got two 4GB Sandisk Ultra cards) in the Amiga 1200, then take the CF and connect it with my USB multi-card reader and read/write/copy/format/whatever.
Btw, here's my little electronics and spare parts corner (due to lack of space, I'm planning a major reorganization and re-furniture of my apartment). Obviously I don't sit there and do the work, I just put the stuff there when I'm not working with it.
Btw., that package looking like a christmas present is what my replacement NMB/Hi-tek keyboard came in. The polish dude joked a little. I picked up the package and I had to shop for food (postal outlet at the supermarket) so I walked around with what looked like a christmas present under my arm during high summer (wearing shorts and t-shirt).
Well, that's it for now... I'll do the A3000 story at another time (sad story for the time being).
I have a ZX Spectrum 48k+ with joystick and expansion interfaces + a box of original games for it etc.
I also have two C64C's (can't find my old brown breadbox 64), two 1541's (one is original, brown with a black push-lock and rainbow logo-sticker and a white with the more modern twist-lock) with a speed-loader cartridge, two boxes of floppies and a bag of original games on cassette.
I'm not using the A1200 at the moment because the TV is shitty (fuzzy/blurry even though I've tried to tune it internally with the internal focus pot, the beam-adjuster etc. but it's no use. I either need a professional degausser or the electron cannon and/or the phosphor layer are simply worn out (it's a 20 year old 20" telly) and I have no monitor for it. The monitor to the right works on the A3000 because the A3000 comes with a scan-doubler (the standard output on Amigas are 15KHz, 50fps) that gives a 31KHz signal. A friend of mine had two 4:3 LCD-monitors (1280*1024) that accepted 31KHz and 50fps that he gave me.
EDIT: forgot that I bought a Micromys v4.0 which allows me to use my Logitech MX518 with scroll wheel in Workbench (which in itself (the OS) is seriously modified and if I had that Indivision AGA Mk2 CR A1200/4000T I could run it in 24-bit on a modern LCD/TFT/LED in hires).
There's so much action going on after the Amiga was resurrected a few years back. New hardware is designed both for Amiga Classic and AmigaNG (AmigaNG = the new generation Amigas based on multi-core PPC systems with modern PCI/PCIe/USB etc. boards with Workbench 4.1. The problem is that the price for an AmigaOne X1000 is ridiculous. The AmigaOne X2000 has been announced as well.
Quote:
In May 2012 Hyperion confirmed they are working on AmigaOS 4.2, It introduces hardware accelerated 3D support, a vastly improved file system API and many other features.
You could actually buy a PPC Mac Mini or PowerMac (or a Mactop with PPC-CPU) and run MorphOS (an AmigaOS4.x clone that is more or less binary compatible afaik).
Btw., does anybody have a single-row 64MB or 128MB 60ns 72-pin SIMM (EDO or FPM doesn't matter) lying around that I can use with my Phase5 Blizzard MK-IV 1230? Most people I've asked have simply said they've thrown away tons of them (aaargh)... I only have a bunch of DIMM's in an antistatic bag with no use (but at least I'm not throwing them away, perhaps someone will need an old 256MB+ DIMM for some classic project in the future).
I'll do the Amiga 3000 later on since it's a somewhat sad story. I'll just say that I got an Amiga 3000 25MHz for free that worked perfectly well. The only issue was that the old battery (as always) leaked so I decided to desolder it (which was a bitch since there was more damage than meets the eye):
It's a 4-layer motherboard: top and bottom with traces and components, the two middle layers are 5v+ and ground. As you can see in the picture the fucking battery took a chunk of the board material with it and since then it's been dead (well, not dead, I can actually fire it up but I can't boot into the OS, it gives strange green color-corruption and shows me this screen when I power it up:
I had just gotten my brand new PCD-50b working just perfect (I was lucky to get hold of it since they aren't made any more, the guy running Mechware just happened to have a new one returned from a customer that couldn't get it to work with his sampler (music sampler) and gave me a good price on it, $50 + shipping, and it worked just fine)
http://a4000t.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65&products_id=180:
It's a SCSI card-reader that treats the cards you put in it as SCSI hard drives, only faster (obviously). In the machine sat the original Quantum 50MB and sounded like a hair dryer in it's last throes of death. I managed to mount a 4GB Sandisk Ultra CF-card, a Sandisk 8GB UHS-1 micro-SD and a PCMCIA-adapter with another CF-card (Kingston) and install WB 3.9 on it, run it on a 1280*1024 19" TFT with crystal clear picture (the A3000 has a built-in scan-doubler as I wrote above). Here's a picture of me partitioning the Sandisk 8GB micro-SD UHS-1:
Now the A3000 stands in a box at a friends place who promised to look at it but it's above his capabilities. I'm sending the motherboard to a pro that may be able to save it (he's repaired hundreds of various Amigas/classic computers).
I even got the elusive Kickstart 3.1's (two firmware chips) for the A3000 the day after I de-soldered that fucking rotten battery that had leaked acid material that had eaten into the motherboard and when I de-soldered it and lifted it out (after cutting off the legs) flakes of the board were stuck to + pole pin (the major pit that looks like rust that have been eating away at the copper layer and even deeper into the GND or +5V layer).
Here's a picture of the board (damn the 3000's are hellish to disassemble just to get at the motherboard) before I started the operation. You can clearly see the big blue blue battery on the upper left, my bane. I'm still hoping it will be salvageable by Tom (the pro I mentioned).
I've owned an Amiga 500 (upgraded later with a 2MB add in card) as my first personal computer. My parents never wanted me to have a console, so I got that instead.
I think my mom regretted it in the end, since it ate away alot of my free time, but I had years of fun with the thing. I'll need to reboot it someday to see if it still works.
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."
Cool. I think getting a computer instead of a console was the right thing though. It allowed for creativity, learning technology, programming (like I did.. assembler on both the C64 and 7 years on the Amiga), music programs etc. instead of playing old Zelda games etc. on the NES day and night and go dumb. I barely played games on the Amiga, I spent most time being a "scener", made demos and intros, had contact with Fairlight, Triad, Razor 1911 (met some of them at various hacker & copy-parties) and many many other groups, I even cracked at game or two (Battlehawks 1942 for instance had one of those copy protections where the game asked for "Word 6 on line 2 in paragraph 1 on page 36".
Since the words were encrypted I programmed a simple memory scanner that listed the contents of the executable on the screen and I had programmed a couple of simple logical functions to shift, roll, OR/AND all the values on the screen. Didn't take long until I found the address where the words were stored. However, I did a lazy crack, I replaced ALL words with YDEX (and when the game started I had put up a crack-notice that the password is YDEX). The real crack would have been to totally disassemble the protection routine and replace the jsr-command with an rts after setting a flag.
Accelerator Card ACA-500
For Amiga 500 Feat. 68EC000/14 MHz and 2 MB RAM
The ACA-500 is a low budget accelerator card for the Amiga 500. It comes with a 68EC000-10 processor and 2 MB of FastMem. (The memory is added on top of internal memory expansions up to 1.8 MB FastMem, so those can still be used together with the ACA-500.)
The most interesting aspects for retro gamers are the included software and the Compact Flash slots:
The ACA-500 comes with licences for the most important Kickstart versions, i.e. 1.3 and 3.1. (Kickstarts images can be loaded from Flash-ROM or Compact Flash card.) Kickstart 1.3 allows you to run old diskette programs that are not compatible with newer Kickstart versions, while Kickstart 3.1 is the best choice for more current, hard disk based software.
The Compact Flash slots allow booting from CF card or mounting PC-formatted cards for easy and convenient data transfer. For example, you can boot the system from an Amiga-formatted CF card in one slot and then copy ADF images from a PC-formatted CF card in the other slot. The FAT95 file system to read/write PC-formatted cards is included in the Flash-ROM, so you don't even have to install additional software. (Hotplugging is not supported.)
In case the 68EC000 CPU and 2 MB of memory are not enough, you can easily expand the ACA-500 by adding an accelerator card like the ACA-1220, ACA-1231 or ACA-1232 card, and you'll instantly have a 020/030-based system with plenty of RAM!
There's also floppy-emulators, ie. a small microSD-card reader where you put .adf files (complete Amiga Disk Files) on and it's got a led screen and a couple of buttons so you can select which disk to boot off, then just press a button and it will work just like a floppy. But obviously booting off a Compact Flash card is the ultimate thing, it's basically like an SSD for Amiga 500/2000/600/1200/3000/4000.
i still have my old amiga 500+ (1 MB RAM) that had to be refurbished with some better parts a few years ago and thanks to ebay still runs.
great thread, really takes me back 2 decades
That is actually pretty cool, since I doubt alot of my old Disks still work, I'll just redownload them. I may just get myself one of those. My girlfriend will be as pleased when I get the old machine in our apartement as my mother once was.
I was more of a consumer though. I played the games you guys cracked and enjoyed the demos quite alot. Some of the tunes were really great!
I hope the old 13" (or was it 14", damn cant remember) CRT still works.
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."
Unbeknownst to the Amiga sleepers the Amiga is having a renaissance and has had for the last 5 years. New machines, OS4 was finally released, then 4.1 and 4.2 is on it's way, new dual & quad-core Amigas (Next-gen) are on their way as well (however they're like €2000+ since they don't manufacture 5,000,000 and buy enormous amounts of components like PC vendors).
If you don't want to buy an old second hand PPC Mac Mini, Powerbook etc. to run MorphOS you can try AROS on the PC: http://aros.sourceforge.net/. It's another AmigaOS-clone that is aiming at binary-compatibility.
MorphOS is much more developed and works on existing PPC-solutions like old Mac Minis, Powerbooks, Mac Pro etc. that use G4 or G5 PPC-CPU's which should be dirt cheap to find on ebay.
It's a full-feathered OS in all regards.
Personally I'm only interested in the real thing. There are Phase5 Blizzard PPC-addon cards to A1200/A4000 that lets you run OS4.x but they're somewhat expensive due to the huge demand.
This is the perfect kit to get OS4.x up and running on the A1200:
In any case, I've managed to save ~392 of my old Amiga modules, against all odds rescued 98.5% of the diskettes (ie. made .adf disk images out of them without read errors, some of them from 1987 and heavily used for several years). That means I have most of my demos, music, graphics and a bazillion source codes saved on my PC for posterity.
And as I said before, I'm mainly interested in Amiga Classic (A500, A1200 & A3000). I'm so happy I still have my original A500 from September 1987, refurbished (all buttons and plastic casing washed, cleaned and looks like new, did the same with the A1200 which also looks like brand new).
Ive got loads of amiga stuff laying about and I still buy new ware when ever I find good price on it A couple of thousand disks and hundreds of original games.
I do however collect C64 <3 stuff too and got shitloads of c64s and stuff for them too
shitloads of new stuff in my pc. Cant keep track of it all.
I'll see if I have any SIMMs lying around, although I'm afraid I probably don't. I cleared out some old shit last year, because it was getting a little out of hand
Did I mention I have two C64C's, two 1541's (original model and white model), a datasette player (cassette player for C64), joysticks and a plastic bag full of original C64 games (Last Ninja 2 for instance) and two cartridges (one is a Turbo-loader cartridge).
I also have a ZX Spectrum 48K+ (the one with a real keyboard, not the rubber-version) with cassette player and a bunch of games, one simple Kempston interface and one big interface with three joystick inputs and a microdrive input.
Two of the three joysticks I have is a Wico Redball and a TAC 2 <3...
Did I mention I have two C64C's, two 1541's (original model and white model), a datasette player (cassette player for C64), joysticks and a plastic bag full of original C64 games (Last Ninja 2 for instance) and two cartridges (one is a Turbo-loader cartridge).
I also have a ZX Spectrum 48K+ (the one with a real keyboard, not the rubber-version) with cassette player and a bunch of games, one simple Kempston interface and one big interface with three joystick inputs and a microdrive input.
Two of the three joysticks I have is a Wico Redball and a TAC 2 <3...
Ive got 2 newer models of c64, 3 old ones and one without a case
2 original 1541´s, 6 (!!) 1530´s and one odd grey tape recorder with speakers which is very anoying as you cannot turn down the sound but instead you have to listen to the tapes while they load. Ive got one cartridge (unfortunatly its broken) and a couple of hundreds of original games (and countess copies).
All this is fine, apart from the fact that the old 1702 is broken and my telly seem unable to find the correct channel.
Dunno what amiga hardware ive got. A couple of 500s, 2x1200, one a3000 and one a1000...other than that, I have no idea what hardware ive got back at mums place. I cant keep them at my own place cos ive got very little space.
Edit: Bought a new Tac-2 not so long ago in an unopened case.
shitloads of new stuff in my pc. Cant keep track of it all.
I'm actually in the market for an original breadbox C64 since I can't find mine (which means I don't have it for some reason) :/
I'm a member of this Swedish Amiga forum, http://safir.amigaos.se/main.php (with C64 and other 8-bit computers supported as well) and there are regular "hacks" in Southern Sweden (L-krona) where Amiga enthusiasts meet up. One member built a custom A500 (motherboard is named Amy) from scratch and sell them as kits, ie. you buy the board and components and build them yourself (or get it pre-built for an extra sum).
The white TAC-2 is a collectors item (simply due to it's rarity) so if you find a cheap one at a garage sale or similar, buy it.
I had an amiga 500plus and budokan. And... and I programmed with 4 colors Oh and I opened the binary applications with the editor and felt like 1337 hacker no1 when I found some unencrypted strings
What DICE did after they stopped making demos on the Amiga and before they turned into EA Battlefield churners:
etc.
This is what they did BEFORE they began making games (and called themselves The Silents)...
The sound/music guy in The Silents at that time, Jesper Kyd, has worked with making music, sound effects and cinematic stuff for many games (Assassins Creed series among many games), movies, tv-series etc.
This is the part I miss about my Amiga era, I loved the machines but it was still all about the games and the music... and by god the Amiga had LEGENDARY games and music.
0. A friend of mine cleaned the area around the battery-corrosion and soldered a new battery on there. That's the only thing I didn't do myself.
1. While scouring over the board a last time before sending it off to a friend from an Amiga forum (which would be expensive since I would give him one of my two 1541's as payment and pay the shipping) I FINALLY found this:
It's a line going from Ramsey (32-bit RAM-controller) to the Fast-RAM banks. It looks like I've dipped the soldering iron on that spot and burned that line off. I sprayed some IPA on it and it was much more visible, all the white "debree"-looking stuff wasn't visible when I had IPA on it.
2. I replaced the 1.4 (superkickstart, ie. it boots the kickstart file from the HD and it ALSO fails with that "No memory"-error. With proper Kickstart 3.1's in the machine I could actually boot into Workbench 3.1 but I only had 2MB chip and a huge kickstart so I ended upp with 500-600kb left after booting. Zero fastram. But at least the machine booted, showed correct colors and everything worked as it should exept for no Fast-RAM (which is a must when running Kick3.1, WB3.1 + all the extra modules and speed-up/tweak stuff I have in the startup-sequence file.
3. Time for repairs. I thought about several ways to do it but those lines are VERY thin and VERY tight together. Using a soldering iron on the area might damage the neighbouring lines. Suddenly I remember something I had from the days of Athlon64 when you used the pencil-trick (but that was iffy and sometimes made things unstable) for which I bought a Conductive pen with a chemical silver solution (sticky). After using a sharp blade to carefully scrape away the protective green paint to get some clear copper on both ends of the break (had to use a magnifying glass) I masked off the neighouring lines, then ripped a pin with a pair of pliers from an old motherboard connector-piece (the one you connect reset-button, power on/off led etc.) and dipped in the chemical silver and "painted it" well over the area.
I didn't remove the masking tape (clear since I wanted to see through it to get a perfect mask and also because thick sticky insulation take would make it more difficult and messy. I fear that if I remove the masking tape the fixed silver path will come with it since some of it is on the masking tape as well. The tape doesn't hurt anything anyway.
4. First boot 20 minutes after doing the fix (letting the conductive goo set for a while):
Blazing fast boot, all modules etc. in 32-bit fastram and chipmem is barely touched, the only thing using it is the WB screen.
Now I'm planning a few upgrades:
1. Graphics card like a PicassoII/IV (but they're like €300), Cybervision64 or similar.
2. ZIP2SIMM-adapter. Whoever invented ZIP-rams ought to be put against a wall and shot. It's the worst possible solution ever invented and many pins were bent (and straighted out again) while inserting them. The sockets are so tough to get through and then just opens up once the pins have reached past the clipping metal-connectors. It's when that release happens that you suddenly see a leg or two completely bent because they couldn't handle the pressure. Amazing that not a single leg broke.
This is exactly what I'm looking for:
You simply rip out all the ZIP module and put in two 8MB 72-pin SIMMS and have maxed out the local FastRAM at 16MB (+2 MB Chipmem). Of course you can add a lot more through the Zorro II/III-bus on the daughter card but this is most important. I can get some return by selling my ZIP-ramchips since they go like butter.
Problem is that it seems like I'll have to built it myself. The PCB-layout etc. are available (the designer doesn't seem to produce them anylonger, I guess he grew tired of spending 2 days on finicky soldering of not only two 72-pin SIM-sockets but also the ZIP-connectors that connects the card to the ZIP-Ram module, ie. several hundreds of small soldering points for a single card. Unless you have some kind of reflow/heatgun station and that is beyond my capabilities.
If you saw that monitor you noticed "clouding". It's dust that has fallen down between the LCD-panel and the back-lightning which means I'll have to open the panel and use a fine microfiber cloth and some canned air.
Then there's the next problem. I have no screen for my A1200. I just got a 64MB 60ns RAM-stick for my Blizzard MK-IV 030 accelerator. I tried a scandoubler but the quality was bleh, vertical stripes and somewhat fuzzy graphics not to mention that there was no flicker-fixer.
Signature/Avatar nuking: none (can be changed in your profile)
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
where is the AMIGA MASTER RACE icon ... i need it now
