- Joined
- Jan 18, 2010
- Messages
- 11,409
Not sure why we haven't had a dedicated Amiga thread here for those in this community that still play with the Amiga in some form, either on the original hardware, FPGA or just Emulation. So feel free to share you Amiga setup, interesting news or what not.
So my story, the Amiga was something I always wanted as a kid in the mid/late 80's when I first heard about them, but never could afford one, I was left cheaper disappointing Tandy offerings and then by the time I could afford one the PC era was in full swing in the mid 90's. A few months ago after a drunken browse on eBay I picked up an Amiga A600, yeah it's not the most loved Amiga in the series, but It's a foot in the door.
So this impulsive eBay purchase the seller ended up being from Brazil, I couldn't argue with the "Buy It Now" price it was more than half as much as other sales, but I almost expected that when the package arrived it was just a couple bricks in a box. Luckily it did come in, and it did power on as advertised. It however had a few flaws, Power Supply ended up burning out a few minutes after power on, Many of the capacitors on the board were bad and some leaked badly, especially in the audio mixing circuitry. However after spending a ton of time and almost bodging it a few times I replaced all the electrolytic caps on the Amiga and the audio seemed fine.
So now I bought a few things:
MicroATX 80W PicoATX power supply to replace the original Amiga PS.
3.1 Kickstart ROM
1MB A604 ChipMemory expansion - **Now with 2MB of RAM!
2.5 44 pin IDE to CF with an 8GB CF card
Gotek USB Floppy Emulator
Now I'm waiting inline for a Vampire II Accelerator.
Some Mods I did:
- Keyboard was in a Portuguese layout as I got it from Brazil, found an AT keyboard I bought for my 386 in High School has compatible, yet slightly more yellow key caps. So now I got it to match the US English layout.
- 3D printed an Amiga themed PicoPS case for the Replacement Power Supply I found on The Thingiverse. I made my own ATX breakout connector and didn't use the pre-made one
- Modded the Amiga case, to fit the Gotek Floppy emulator inside the case. Also I created a custom Amiga Floppy Cable to allow both the original Floppy drive to work and the Gotek Drive on the same internal cable. I use a DPDT toggle switch to switch the power to either the Gotek Drive or the regular floppy. I could have gone with an External Floppy, but most games and some applications only like to work if it's DF0 and hacking the external port to be DF1 would have required some hardware hacking, I felt this to be the easier solution.
Some pics:
Just Came in, un-modified:
Some ugly corrosion on the Board, I should get this sealed at some point:
Gotek Case Mod:
7Mhz, 2MB on IRC via AMIRC - Had to go down to two color to give me enough RAM to run it:
So my story, the Amiga was something I always wanted as a kid in the mid/late 80's when I first heard about them, but never could afford one, I was left cheaper disappointing Tandy offerings and then by the time I could afford one the PC era was in full swing in the mid 90's. A few months ago after a drunken browse on eBay I picked up an Amiga A600, yeah it's not the most loved Amiga in the series, but It's a foot in the door.
So this impulsive eBay purchase the seller ended up being from Brazil, I couldn't argue with the "Buy It Now" price it was more than half as much as other sales, but I almost expected that when the package arrived it was just a couple bricks in a box. Luckily it did come in, and it did power on as advertised. It however had a few flaws, Power Supply ended up burning out a few minutes after power on, Many of the capacitors on the board were bad and some leaked badly, especially in the audio mixing circuitry. However after spending a ton of time and almost bodging it a few times I replaced all the electrolytic caps on the Amiga and the audio seemed fine.
So now I bought a few things:
MicroATX 80W PicoATX power supply to replace the original Amiga PS.
3.1 Kickstart ROM
1MB A604 ChipMemory expansion - **Now with 2MB of RAM!
2.5 44 pin IDE to CF with an 8GB CF card
Gotek USB Floppy Emulator
Now I'm waiting inline for a Vampire II Accelerator.
Some Mods I did:
- Keyboard was in a Portuguese layout as I got it from Brazil, found an AT keyboard I bought for my 386 in High School has compatible, yet slightly more yellow key caps. So now I got it to match the US English layout.
- 3D printed an Amiga themed PicoPS case for the Replacement Power Supply I found on The Thingiverse. I made my own ATX breakout connector and didn't use the pre-made one
- Modded the Amiga case, to fit the Gotek Floppy emulator inside the case. Also I created a custom Amiga Floppy Cable to allow both the original Floppy drive to work and the Gotek Drive on the same internal cable. I use a DPDT toggle switch to switch the power to either the Gotek Drive or the regular floppy. I could have gone with an External Floppy, but most games and some applications only like to work if it's DF0 and hacking the external port to be DF1 would have required some hardware hacking, I felt this to be the easier solution.
Some pics:
Just Came in, un-modified:
Some ugly corrosion on the Board, I should get this sealed at some point:
Gotek Case Mod:
7Mhz, 2MB on IRC via AMIRC - Had to go down to two color to give me enough RAM to run it:
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