Amiga Thread.


ClockworkCoder said:
See my comment above regarding joysticks. I think it would be a fun / rewarding project to make an arcade (microswitched) controller, if you're so inclined.
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yeah I made one myself it was a fun project.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2416808


pmprog said:
I had previously thought about that making one, but all the db9 connectors i can find have panel mount holes, which make them too wide to plug in my c64, so i advice the Amiga too. Though i did find some extension leads, but they havea squarer shape than my c64 ports. They fit, but it'sa bit tight.
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Yeah I ran into this same issue. I ended up hacking a panel mount connector and using glue to hold it together, but it ended up being a bit loose and kept on slipping out of the Amiga. I suggest buying db9 joystick extender cable and cutting it, there is a brand out there advertising it for the Mega drive/ Genesis.
 
TrashyMG said:
Yeah I ran into this same issue. I ended up hacking a panel mount connector and using glue to hold it together, but it ended up being a bit loose and kept on slipping out of the Amiga.
Click to expand...

on my A1200 it's a perfect fit. Even have mine screwed in.

I'll have to add you to my Thingiverse follow list :)
 
I can't quite see how it has an original battery in it but that hasn't leaked yet making the unit inoperable in some way. That said, the battery on my RISC PC leaked all over the motherboard, but didn't actually affect it's operation in any perceivable way before I yanked it and cleaned up to stop risking it actually eating something important. I think it only powers the RTC in that machine, and doesn't power a CMOS ram chip for the system settings which must be in some early flash variant in that machine (or maybe the SCSI card's settings are flash which is hiding the fact it's lost its core settings and can still boot).
 
Yeah the Amiga 3000/4000s have a double whammy of leaking Varta brand batteries that almost always leak and surface mount electrolytic capacitors that have a high chance of leaking over time.
 
hey there people, I wanted to do a little research on AmigaOS 3.1.4 before buying and stumbled upon the recent legal struggle between hyperion and amiga inc./cloanto... can someone fill me in on what this is all about?

from what I can gather, there is a dispute because of the amiga trademark and they butted heads before about amigaOS 4... I feel like cloanto is abusing the licenses they hold in favor of selling their emulator packs instead of supporting the actual amiga community. is that correct or is cloanto more than a copyright/license/trademark troll?

ugh, all of this unpleasantness wouldn't be necessary if they'd open sourced at least the 68k amigaos. I fear for future updates and bugfixes once the rights holders have lawyered each other into bankrupcy.
 
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I'd not bother just yet. There are show-stopping bugs in 3.1.4's shell handling which need to be patched before you buy it.
 
ZXDunny said:
I'd not bother just yet. There are show-stopping bugs in 3.1.4's shell handling which need to be patched before you buy it.
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yeah I read about that. The only bug I think is a show stopper is the failcode handling, the other stuff like pipes and so on seem to be different by design (and I am not using my amiga for shell scripting, but mainly for whdload). I am interested in finding out about that ongoing legal dispute.
 
sometimes I don't know wether to love my amiga or kill it with a sledge hammer out of frustration. Today I decided to make a scart cable. I followed Ian Stedmans diagram, tested every connection for continuity and... it doesn't work at all. Not on my HD LCD (which I know for a fact has RGB on the scart socket, I have been using it for years) and also not on my sony pvm crt. I swapped the resistor on the rgb sense pin, no dice. Finally caved in an bought a cable online... I think I spent like 5 hours fiddling with that darned cable.

Then I wanted to play some EOB to distract myself from the failed cable project and when I wanted to save the game, the amiga reset. It's been doing that an awful lot lately (resetting when trying to save or load some savegame) and I think the PSU just can't deal with accelerator + HDD at the same time anymore. That stinks, because it already is the second PSU I have bought last year. So I just bought another one, which is newly made and supposed to deliver more oomph, especially for tricked out amigas with mods/additional hardware.

I hope I will finally be able to enjoy my fricking ACA1233 with a beefier cpu, because otherwise I think I am going to sell the whole overpriced POS.

The A1200 already was expensive enough, plus floppy emulator and mounting pcb for that. Then I had to recap it and send it off to someone because it was still unstable. The accelerator was also expensive, but I wanted to use whdload (which I also bought... so more money down the drain potentially) and have some fun with the amiga. Unstable as heck again... so I bought another PSU to see if it would run better then, following recommendations on several amiga forums. And now another PSU and another video cable... I have pumped so much time and money into this thing... it sickens me to think about it.

So yeah, I won't be buying 3.1.4 kickstart & workbench anytime soon. If someone does, please share your experience.

Anybody else having moments of frustration with their amiga?
 
@xnopasaranx , running stock Amiga PSUs? I know the ones that come with the A1200/A600 are fairly weak with current draw, add close to 30 years and you may be running into issues with them. Myself and many have been switching to industrial supplies like the Mean Well RT-50B or RT-65B. some run ATX supplies, but to me they have too noisy power rails, they're designed to be used with motherboards with a large amount of smoothing capacitors. Another issue with ATX supplies is it's now harder to find modern ones with -12V lines.

For me, I've done all the restoration work myself recapping and such, so yeah I've felt the frustration a bit.
 
Yeah, I've felt a lot of frustration too with various issues, but I've learned a lot while upgrading and modding it.

I just have an intermittent keyboard issue (that I can work around) and am never quite sure if a guru meditation is due to incompatibility or a corrupted image (the codes I have had are are thankfully software related).

However all these frustrations tell me is I need to spend more time using it.
 
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okay so I received the scart cable and at first I thought I was having an issue with the shielding as there were strange horizontal ghost lines and distortions on screen. I then switched from my A500 4.5A PSU to the slightly younger A1200 3A PSU and the picture is super crisp now! so yeah that old block is definitiley on it's way out. not trusting the one I am using right now either.

I am certain my recent resets are because of the failing PSU now, seeing how unstable it must have been causing all that interference. hehe and with the shitty composite video I didn't even notice before :D

glad I have a brand new PSU coming. that should be safe and provide load more power too.
 
I received my new PSU last week. The good news is: the resets have stopped completely. the bad news: my chipmem appears to be faulty. fuck.

I kept getting weird crashes after about 2-3hrs runtime. Ruling out the PSU as the source of the problem (the resets are gone, so that was one problem but not this), I have suspected my accelerator, because the crashess occur way earlier with it installed. after running systest with and then without the accelerator I now know, that it is indeed the chipmem itself. here is the thing though: it must be a thermal issue of some kind. why do the errors only occur after 2-3hrs of runtime without the ACA1233n? something deforms slightly due to thermal stress and causes these issues, but what could it be? the RAM chips barely get warm to the touch, I can't fathom how that could possibly be problematic. all of the custom chips are barely warming up either.

this POS is cursed! I know I should've gotten the monkey paw instead...
 
You're really not having much luck there @xnopasaranx. Sounds like it may be hard to diagnose too (at least for mortals like me without knowledge or equipment), although I'd be tempted to try to search for cold/cracked solder joints. You could also try the forum at amigalove.com is where I got some good advice to help me with my Amiga issues.
 
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@ClockworkCoder thanks for the tip with amigalove, but I am already on eab.abime.net and a1k.org (a German Amiga community). I think my chances of finding someone who has a PAL Amiga is greater on eab, and maybe I can find someone on A1k aswell who would be willing to take a look at the board directly. That's where I found the guy who helped me after I received the A1200 in the first place.

Under the microscope, I was not able to find cold solder joints on the RAM. Probably because it is PLCC and I can't look under the contacts due to the pitch. I did however see some solder joints that looked suspicious to me on the custom chips, mainly budgie.
Maybe reflowing that chip will help. People on eab reckon it might be a problem with budgie or even the cpu.
 
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